MANY BUDDHAS?

This incarnation of Lord Buddha is not the same Buddha incarnation we
have in the present history of mankind. According to Çréla Jéva Gosvämé, the
Buddha incarnation mentioned in this verse appeared in a different Kali age.
In the duration of life of one Manu there are more than seventy-two
Kali-yugas, and in one of them the particular type of Buddha mentioned here
would appear. Lord Buddha incarnates at a time when the people are most
materialistic and preaches common-sense religious principles. Such ahiàsä is
not a religious principle itself, but it is an important quality for persons who
are actually religious. It is a common-sense religion because one is advised to
do no harm to any other animal or living being because such harmful actions
are equally harmful to he who does the harm. But before learning these
principles of nonviolence one has to learn two other principles, namely to be
humble and to be prideless. Unless one is humble and prideless, one cannot be
harmless and nonviolent. And after being nonviolent one has to learn
tolerance and simplicity of living. One must offer respects to the great
religious preachers and spiritual leaders and also train the senses for controlled
action, learning to be unattached to family and home, and enacting devotional
service to the Lord, etc. At the ultimate stage one has to accept the Lord and
become His devotee; otherwise there is no religion. In religious principles there
must be God in the center; otherwise simple moral instructions are merely
subreligious principles, generally known as upadharma, or nearness to religious
principles.