The Sakyamuni Buddha: The Light of the World 

Babasaheb's love for the Buddha was very old, it began in his teen age when Dada Keluskar presented young Bhim the biography of the Buddha. In the 30s when Lokanath, the Italian monk, visited Rajgriha, he saw the picture of the Buddha adorning Babasaheb's room. 

It is well known that Babasaheb Ambedkar got the Pali Gathas recorded and listened to them every morning. He chanted Tisarana and Panchashil (Three Treasures and Five Precepts) regularly as recorded by Devi Dayal. He learnt sketching and sculpting to sketch and scult the Buddha he envisioned.

One of the most intelligent man of the recent time was drawn emotionally and religiously drawn to the Sakyamuni Buddha, whose arising in the world, Babasaheb Ambedkar compared with the end of Dark Age for the human kind. 

Babasaheb Ambedkar defended Buddha if any one criticized him and in the end of his life Babasaheb wrote a book on the Buddha and His Dhamma. Let us reflect on this title a bit to let Babasaheb's intention sink in our hearts and our total being. Babasaheb could have easily written an intellectual history of Buddhism and written commentaries on Sutra after Sutra, instead he chose the Buddha over, I would say, the Dhamma and Sangha.

The presence of the Buddha on every page of the book is something to which we must draw our attention to. Without the Buddha, there is no Dhamma, and we can say that without Dhamma, there is no Buddha. But, what is the Dhamma after all if it is not manifested in the human form? It will be just scholastic body with linguistic twists. The Buddha is the living Dhamma. 

That is the reason why when the teachings got lost in the labyrinth of words, books, institutions, formalism, and all those deadening static forms, the revolutionaries in Buddhism went back to life of the Buddha. His life, though it was never recorded the way his teachings were, is the guiding life. His life moves us in the direction of eternal light that the Buddha embodied.

The Buddha invoked, awakened, and aspired by Babasaheb Ambedkar in his life and in his message and in the life of his people and humanity is the highest expression of Babasaheb. This love and unshakable faith in Tathagata is enough to bring light in the dark world. 

Why Babasaheb Ambedkar responded with his entire being to the Buddha? It is because the similar light was awakened in his own heart. This is a little paradoxical, but the Dhamma arises only when a Buddha reflects in other human being.

Much can be said about the mind of the Buddha. There are many ways in which the Buddha described his enlightened experience, but let us be clear that there is limitation to describe any experience, how much difficult  that would to describe which no one but Siddhartha experienced the first time in the known human history. The description of the experience varied from people to people as people have different dispositions.

So is the response of people to the Buddha vary. In that common quest to be the Buddha lies the openness to all the different teachings that  the Buddha gave, which we call Dhamma, and embracing those people who together wants to become the Buddha, which we call the Sangha. 

The Buddha is therefore the only unifying principle for all Buddhist schools and all Buddhist groups and the sanghas.

Of course, it is helpful to have community around and set of common practices to make faster progress, but ultimately it's the personal commitment and responsibility to awaken.

It is even better to have an awakened guru, the living Dhamma, for quicker awakening just like what happened in the medieval India after destruction of Buddhist universities and monastic institutions, there arose a movement of Siddhas and saints who embodied the light and reflected that on humanity like Sarah, Kabir, and Raidas. 

That the continuity was not lost is reflected in living tradition of Kabir which Babasahab's family followed and so many in the North India sang Raidas's teachings communally.

To this unbroken passing of light and its source we must open our hearts to to dispel darkness. This opening of the heart to Buddha is the true celebration and significance of the Buddha Jayanti.