There is also much in the Vedic worldview that carries over into Buddhism. The law of karma carries over, though the Buddha refined it and put the emphasis on the intentions behind purposeful action when determining whether a given act is wholesome or unwholesome. The various beings and worlds of the Vedic cosmology carried over and this eventually became the six paths of rebirth in Buddhism (the hell-dwellers, hungry ghosts, animals, fighting demons, humans, and heavenly beings), though the Buddha would propose a way to escape the round of rebirth among these six worlds. The Buddha certainly agreed with the Upanishadic sages that the benefits of the Vedic sacrifices, worldly wealth and rebirth in the heavens, were temporary at best and that a more transcendental goal was needed.

Not everything carried over, however. The Buddha did not agree with the system of the four classes (what became the basis of the caste system) and frequently argued with brahmins who believed that they were superior simply by virtue of being born as brahmins, whereas the Buddha pointed out that it is only by virtuous deeds that one could claim to be pure and worthy of honor. The Buddha also did away with the more extreme and harmful forms of asceticism like wearing no clothes, fasting to the point of starvation, or subjecting oneself to the five fires (sitting in the middle of four bonfires with the hot summer sun overhead as the fifth fire). Instead he proposed a set of dhūta (lit. “shaking off’), twelve relatively mild austerities such as keeping only three robes, or only eating once a day, or sleeping under the open sky. The dhūta were a voluntary practice for those monks and nuns who felt the need for such extra discipline to help shake off the habits of self-indulgence. Note that in the Lotus Sūtra it says that one who keeps the sūtra even for a moment “should be considered to have already observed the precepts and practiced the dhūta.” Finally, although the Buddha did teach the methods of yogic concentration that he had learned from Ārāda Kālāma and Rudraka Rāmaputra, he taught the yogic methods only to provide a means to concentrate the mind in preparation for the distinctive Buddhist practice of “insight” (Skt. vipa’yanā; Ch. kuan; J. kan) meditation and as a form of peaceful abiding for the arhats. By itself, the yogic discipline only leads to the meditative absorptions known as the four dhyānas (Ch. ch’an; J. zen) and other states of deep concentration. These states were only temporary respites as were the heavenly rebirths that corresponded to their cultivation. This has been discussed in regard to the wrong views relating to eternity in the Buddha’s Supreme Net Discourse.