Prabhupāda: So his principle was that they did not believe in God. So still the Buddhists says, "You don't believe in God." So but they are worshiping God, Lord Buddha. There are so many temples. In the same way, as we worship. So this is transcendental cheating.
Allen Ginsberg: Transcendental cheating.
Prabhupāda: (chuckling) Just like sometimes father has to cheat his child. That is not cheating. That is welfare. But apparently it (looks) likes cheating. A child is insistent on some point. "Yes, yes. You are all right. But you do this like this. Yes, you are very good boy." Like that. But Vaiṣṇava, in Vaiṣṇava literature, in Vedic literature, he is God. The godless worshiping God in a different way. If there is nothing, why they should worship Buddha even?
Allen Ginsberg: They don't... Well, strictly speaking, one does not worship Buddha.
Prabhupāda: Oh, yes, they have many big, big temples in Burma and Japan.
Allen Ginsberg: Yeah. But the practice in the temples is like empty.
Prabhupāda: Maybe. That is a little different. That's all. But the temple worship and God worship is there.
Allen Ginsberg: In, like in Zen Buddhism and in...
Prabhupāda: That is later invention. Originally Lord Buddha, the statue of Lord Buddha, worshiped all, all over...
Allen Ginsberg: Originally there was no Buddha. There was a wheel for the doctrine, for the dharma. There was a wheel, and then for a parasol.
Prabhupāda: We see from historical, archeological evidences, all over...
Allen Ginsberg: Then, when the Europeans came to India...
Prabhupāda: It is not the question, Europeans.
Allen Ginsberg: Then they made a statue of a human-faced Buddha.
Guest (1): No, no. Buddha's temple was much before then. (indistinct)
Allen Ginsberg: What it had as a...
Guest (1): No. Buddha was a yuga-pracāra. That is very old, old.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Very old.
Guest (1): Because I saw the date, the posture of Lord Buddha when he died in a place, in a village, and I saw Buddha 20 feet long, gold Buddha statue, just the way he lied when he was dead.
Allen Ginsberg: Pari nirvāṇa, yes.
Guest (1): Pari nirvāṇa pose, exactly. Twenty-two feet he was, long. And it was made just after his death.
Allen Ginsberg: What I had understood is that like the Jews and the Muslims, the original first few centuries of Buddhist meditation made use of a wheel for the dharma, or a parasol, or a bo tree as the image of Buddha, as at Sanchi. But no, but no...
Guest (1): So long Buddha was living. After that, when Buddha died, they started making his statue, I think.
Prabhupāda: yes. That is the archeological evidence. Archeological evidence is that Buddha's statues were original.
Allen Ginsberg: The museum at Mathurā, I think, had the earliest human statues of Buddha, which are Greek nature.
Guest (1): Because Candragupta's style... (Bengali) And they had many temple...
Prabhupāda: No, Buddha is worshiped by statue. That is historical. That is historical fact. And there are many temples in Burma, China, and in Japan, all these Buddhist countries. But these Buddhist temples began not exactly after Buddha's disappearance. At least, after one thousand years. That is a fact.