The incarnation of Kṛṣṇa, the founder of Buddhism who lived during the 5th century B.C., and appeared to bewilder atheists and dissuade them from performing unnecessary animal sacrifices; Two thousand five hundred years ago, Lord Viṣṇu sent forth an empowered jīva known as the Buddha (the Enlightened One). Assuming the guise of Siddhārtha Gautama, he took birth in Kapilavastu (present-day Nepal) as the son of King Śuddhodana. At age twenty-nine he renounced the world and embarked upon a mission to preach ahiṁsā (nonviolence) and śūnyatā (extinction of the self). He especially opposed the prevailing karma-mīmāṁsā philosophy of his time, which distorted Vedic knowledge and promoted unnecessary animal sacrifice. The Buddha’s teaching rests on four principles: 1) material existence is duḥkha, miserable. 2) There is samudāya, a cause of material existence. 3) Because there is a cause, there is also nirodha, a way to remove material existence. 4) That way is mārga, the path of righteousness that the Buddha himself exemplified. But as he circumvented the distortion of Vedic sacrifice in leading people away from the sin of animal slaughter, he denied the Vedas, the soul, and God. After the Buddha’s disappearance, many schools of Buddhism came into being. See Avatāra (Śaktyāveśa), Buddhism.
