This sutra is absolutely wrong. It is not a statement of Gautam Buddha, because a man of his understanding cannot tell people that they can achieve enlightenment by performing such meritorious works as building monasteries, casting statues, burning incense… Can you see any connection with enlightenment and burning incense? You can burn mountains of incense…there is no logical relationship with your becoming enlightened. You may get burned, that’s the only thing. Making monasteries…and you are not a monk! – you are making monasteries for other fools to become monks. How can that become your enlightenment? How many monasteries did Gautam Buddha make before he became enlightened? How much incense did he burn? How many flowers did he scatter? How many eternal lamps did he burn?

No! This statement is not at all Gautam Buddha’s. It is the invention of the Mahayana school, a certain creed and doctrine. And there was a historical reason why such things were created. Buddha was a very straightforward man. He said whatsoever was right – whatever the consequences. For example, he said, “All the pundits and the scholars and the brahmins are idiots – and they are parasites. For centuries they have been sucking the blood of the people.” He called the Vedas “just rubbish.” And the Vedas were so much respected by the Hindus that anybody calling them rubbish must have had great courage. He did not accept any Hindu avatara, any Hindu incarnation, as having any value.

For example, Parasuram is one of the Hindu incarnations of God. He was the son of a man who was thought to be a great seer, but he was suspicious…as all husbands are suspicious about their wives, and all wives are automatically suspicious of their husbands. That is their only relationship. Finally the father became so convinced of his suspicion – which may have had grounds or may not have had grounds, he could not be certain on this point – that he ordered his son, Parasuram, to cut off his mother’s head and bring it to him. And Parasuram went, without asking why. It was not a small thing! He cut off his mother’s head and brought it to his father.

Then the father told him, “I have been suspecting her, but now I have certain evidence that she has been in love with a man who is a great warrior.” Parasuram and his family belonged to the caste of the brahmins. Parasuram said, “Don’t you be worried. I will not leave a single man of the warrior caste alive.”

The story may be exaggerated, but it shows the quality of the man. It shows that he killed all the warriors of the whole world many, many times. And from where were these new warriors coming? The Hindu society accepts a very strange thing, and nobody ever considers…. They go on claiming they have a great culture, but they never look at its foundation; their culture is just a phony name.

The Hindu society accepted that if a woman came to a brahmin seer and asked that she be given a child, then it was obligatory for the brahmin seer to make love to her and make her pregnant. He could not reject her. So Parasuram went on cutting off the heads of the warriors; the widows were left, and they were going to the seers…. It was a good business, a great conspiracy!