According to the Gaudiya Vaisnava history, Lord Gautama Buddha, who appeared sometime around 500 BC, was a saktyavesa-avatara, or an empowered incarnation of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The purpose of his incarnation was to teach the people upa-dharma, or sub-religious principles.

At the time of his appearance the then current implementation of the Vedic principles had become degraded. It is the nature of this world that everything tends toward decay and disorder. An original vital principle becomes implemented in a specific practice in particular environmental circumstances. This then becomes a doctrine that is preserved for its own sake as the original principles is forgotten.

As an example, there was once a Guru who spoke on the scriptures in the evening. He had a pet cat, which would run and play amongst the crowd while he was speaking. In order to curtail this, he would tie the cat to a tree. After some time that Guru left his body. His disciples continued to speak from the scriptures in that place, and they would tie the cat to the tree. After some more time, the cat left its body. Then they procured another cat and tied that to the tree. After four successive generations, one of the members of that disciplic succession wrote an essay on the venerable tradition of their sect of tying a cat to a tree during scriptural discourses.

That’s simply the nature of this world. Traditions require reformation and renovation, and our own spiritual practice requires it from year to year, and even day to day. We forget about the essence, about why we’re doing things, and start to just go through the motions.

At the time of the appearance of Buddha, the people had become very degraded. In the Vedic system structures are created that allow people to gradually advance from where they are at. Therefore progressive concessionary arrangements and positions were made for meat-eating. These were abused, however, just as marriage, the progressive concessionary position for sex desire, has become abused in the modern age. Therefore Lord Buddha appeared to preach ahimsa, or non-violence, in order to readjust the situation.

So far, so good, standard history as we know it. Now comes the interesting part - how did Buddha manage to get traction with his preaching? If people were into meat-eating, and he came along opposing that, why did people follow him?

The reason is that not only was there widespread killing of animals going on, but the Brahamanas were oppressing and exploiting the people, using the Vedic scriptures as their justification. We often hear that Lord Buddha preached “throw out the Vedic system” because people were killing too many animals on the basis of the Vedas, but what he preached, and what the people responded to was: “throw out the Vedic system because it is being used to oppress you”, and the people said: “Yes!”

He was able to encourage them to a non-violent lifestyle that was aligned with the real spirit of Vedic human civilization, while throwing out the pseudo-system that justified itself on external adherence to Vedic teaching.

When Sripada Sankaracarya forced Buddhism out of India in the 9th century AD, we usually think that he forcefully preached the doctrine of the Vedas with a nirvisesa (impersonalist) conclusion that resembled the sunyavada doctrine evolved in Buddhism. That is what he did, but how he did it, is that he got the support of the now weakened and irrelevant Brahmana class by basing his preaching on the Vedic scriptures, and he got the support of the people by preaching that one can become a brahmana no matter what his family background, if he is qualified to act as one (guna-karma vibhagasah).

(Sripada Sankaracarya took sannyasa at the age of 8, and left his body at the age of 33, by the way.)

Again, by the time of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the situation had deteriorated to one of debauchery in the name of Vedic injunctions, and caste brahmanism. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, while preaching His divine message of Love of God, reached out to and connected with, validated, and empowered socially excluded and marginalized groups, as exemplified in his relationship with Haridasa Thakura, born in a Muslim family and considered “untouchable” by the standards of orthodox Hindus of the day.

Srila Bhaktivinode Thakura, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, and Srila Prabhupada did the same thing, with Srila Prabhupada going outside India and for the first time demonstrating on a large scale that non-Hindus (people outside the geographical boundaries of India) can apply the Vedic principles, and that a Vedic framework can adapt to their environment.

So we can see that these personalities appear when there is a large excluded sector and their preaching gains popular momentum amongst the disenfranchised sectors of society. One of the symptoms of disturbance in the correct social order is when one sector of society unnaturally gains dominance and utilizes the social structure to oppress the other sectors.

As people begin to wake up to the reality of global warming and climate change, and realize that it is not possible to stop it without fundamentally altering the nature of power in society we will see things polarize more and more.

The other day I got a letter from the Australian Conservation Fund asking me for a donation to help fight climate change.

The thing is that climate change is the natural consequence of the current economic structure of the world, which is the result of the dominance of the vaisya mentality - seeing the world as a global marketplace. The only way to halt climate change is to change the structure of society. Most people are comfortably numb these days, but they are beginning to wake up to the impending disaster. After some time their consciousness will rise sufficiently, and their actions to stop the symptoms will lead them close enough to the root causes that they will realize what is going on.

And at that time, we will be ready.