The distinction, and the most important point to consider, as I see, between the Upanishads, Vedanta (especially Advaita Vedanta)and Hindu thought in general and Buddha Dhamma is that only in the latter is found a way out of life’s sufferings.
Indian thought is a mix of the purely devotional, Vaishanavism or Bhakti on the one side and the stricktly metaphysical, from the Kevaladvaita of Sankara to the Bhedabheda of Bhaskara and Yadava to the ‘cosmological and eternal priciples’ of the Upanishads, and most of these last make absolute sense and are irrefutable by reason if one goes into them. When I remarked about this some weeks ago, Lal replied that those Yogis and Gurus resposonsible for these teachings actually retrieved them from fragments of the Buddha Kassapa sasana – of course, with their own views and other additions to it throughout the time since.
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