Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Buddhism and God
So, As a Christian I've been raised to believe in a father-god who is 'out there' in space...what do buddhists believe about god? I've heard that Buddhism is non-theistic, but what does that mean?
Thanks!
-Brad
Thanks!
-Brad
0
Comments
In Buddhism, there are views on at least two kinds of 'gods'.
The first kind of 'god' is a creator god, which created the universe & our lives. Buddhism denies such a thing exists. Buddhism is strictly scientific & holds the universe & everything in it arise, exist & cease following the principles of cause & effect. Buddhism holds all material, mental & spiritual things are natural elements (dhatus) and are created by nature (dhamma) and subject to natural laws & causes & conditions.
The second kind of 'god' is a being or person with compassion or a being who dwells always in the bliss of meditation. Buddhism holds these beings exist. For example, about parents, the Buddha taught:
Or about meditation and the spiritual life, Buddha said:
In Tibetan Buddhism, there are many kinds of 'gods' or angels (bodhisatvas), who dwell with love & compassion. These gods or angels are merely human beings however, with some extra special abilities.
In Buddhism in general, there is the teaching about the Dwellings of the Gods, the Four Brahma Vihara. Here, if one wishes to have a mind like a 'god', one should develop loving-kindness or universal love (metta); compassion, the wish to alleviate suffering (karuna); sympathetic joy, being happy for the happiness and success of others (mudita); and equinimity (upeka), having an accepting mind.
In Buddhism, you will find many teachings that are similar to Christian teachings. However, if you can see clearly, you will see these similar teachings of Jesus come from the Buddha. Please never regard that the teachings of Jesus were his unique teachings. They merely come from the Buddha and were adapted into a theistic context. This is right understanding about the evolution of religion in our world.
In summary, Buddhism agrees with the Christian view that 'god is love' because this is actually a Buddhist teaching, it comes from Buddhism. However, Buddhism denies there is a creator god that created the universe and denies there is a father-god who is 'out there' in space.
Kind regards
DDhatu
It's also worth noting that Buddha was born in India 500 years before Christ. It's unlikely that he ever came into contact with Jews or their belief in a creator God.
Kind wishes,
Dazzle
The belief in a 'creator god' was known to the Buddha. Just as he repudiated the Brahmins as 'the chosen people', he repudiated the creator god, namely, Prajapati.
In the suttas, the Buddha did describe those who try to describe God as a string of blind men trying to describe an elephant. One describes the truck, another the front leg, another the back leg, another the belly.
Many teachings are reported about the Buddha's views on God, be it Brahma, Prajapati and the other gods of the Indians:
I was refering to the Abrahamic 'God of the desert' rather than the Hindu gods.
Anyway, that's really interesting reading, thanks. Do you have any Sutta references please?
Dazzle
The Buddha taught that it is unimportant whether or not you believe in a god or gods or nothing at all. That is irrelevant to what he taught. If you want to believe in god, fine. If you don't, fine. Whether or not god actually exists is not something the Buddha ever discussed. Living in India, he often referenced the local gods like Brahmin and Shiva as he taught in the parlance of his audience to whom such concepts were not strange or foreign.
I'm not sure what the heck Dhamma Dhatu is talking about when he talks about "gods and angels" in Tibetan Buddhism. Once again, he's speaking about things he has no understanding of. Bodhisattvas are neither gods nor angels. They are simply human beings who have taken a vow to always work for the liberation and enlightenment of all sentient beings. Deities in Tibetan Buddhism are simply iconic representations of various aspects of enlightened mind, such as compassion, wisdom, etc. They don't exist "out there" somewhere but in fact are present in your own Buddhanature.
Palzang
Truly, the best place is in the Human realm... we have so many opportunities and teachings to be able to further our own journey to Nibbana!!
"Be ye not afraid to show a kindness to strangers,
For thereby have some entertained bodhisattvas unawares"...
(Hebrews 13:2. Sort of. Maybe.
A bit......
Yeah, you never know who someone might really be. Best to treat everyone like a deity!
Palzang
Then I suggest you read my post more carefully. I basic said what you said.
Your post is irrelevent to the practise of Buddhism. If we have met some Christian bodhisattvas awares or unawares, so what? They are merely impermanent, unsatisfactory, not-self and dependently originated.
My perspective is different than yours because I personally know more angelic Christians than angelic Buddhists. (Angelic means they have highly developed paramanis & siddhis).
Our difference is you are 'on the outside looking in' whereas I am 'on the inside looking out'.
Australia is a large place and I moved 1,000's of miles away from my home recently. One of my angelic Christians friends wished to visit me so I allowed him. However, he wished to spend his time with me 'Christian joy talking' rather than in quiet meditation. Whilst I have attended many Christian events, he would not attend a movie I volunteered to show at our local Buddhist centre. He would not stop his Christian 'joy talking', so I asked him to leave. Instead of entertaining him, I put him on the next plane home.
Similarly, where I work, we have two Christian angels (well one angel and her quite spiritually mature associate). Whilst we are good friends professionally and have an unspoken spiritual understanding, give him an inch and he will take a mile.
I was recently sitting with my boss and he dropped in and I said something to him. My boss was about to ask him a related question and I jumped in: "Don't ask him that or he will never shut up!"
If you think there is merit found in entertaining Christian angels, that is your view. Personally, in my experience, there is no merit there whatsoever. Christian angels do not actually hold much regard for Buddhism. They are more interested in pushing their own religion and are ready to disparage Buddhism.
Jesus taught: "Follow my yoke. For my burden is easy and my way is light". In Christianity, one is saved by the blood and forgiveness of Christ. It is the easy path to heaven through faith.
This is the Christian religion and this is what the Christian angels share with others. But many 'Buddhists' wish to project upon it otherwise.
Believe me. Have faith. The Christian angels are not instructing their followers in something akin to the Noble Eightfold Path. They are instructing eternal life after death through faith.
Uh, no you didn't.
Palzang
I was kidding.
I did lighten up. I said: However, it is you who are making out Christianity is something it is not, making Christianity heavier & more serious than it really is.
Christianity is salvation thru the forgiveness & blood of Christ. There is no rebirth or journey to Nirvana. There is salvation thru faith. From this there is Eternal Life.
If you say: "Oh. The Christian path is just rebirth in heaven but it is still not Nirvana" as many Buddhists do, then that is a very strong insult to Christianity.
Jesus taught through him there is Eternal Life. It is final for him and not merely a 'stage' because the Buddhists say it is.
My impression is you were projecting Mahayana notions of dieties upon what you read in the Bible.
It is important to free ourselves from this conditioning and tune into the Buddha-Dhamma.
Otherwise, we will never know Nirvana.
We will merely spend our life shopping in the supermarket of religions.
With much love & compassion
May all beings be liberated
Dhamma Dhatu
But when a Buddhist states Christianity is other than this, this is disrespect to Christianity. It is imposing one's subjective, intolerant & defiled view upon Christianity.
Jesus said: "One cannot put new wine into old skins".
Jesus said: "One cannot be the slave of two masters".
If we are new to Buddhism and wish to explore it, it is important we let go of the old to embrace the new.
The Zen Masters say: "Empty your tea cup".
Your impression is wrong. Firstly, I know very little about Mahayana, so would not even venture into the territory to such an extent.
secondly, you presume too much. Your perception, as they say, is deception. You're adding 2 + 2 and making 135.
It is equally important to accept they exist and live along side them, rather than keep stabbing them in the back.
You are replacing the conditioning of acceptance with the conditioning of condemnation.
leave it alone DD.
OK?
Good questions you're already asking! Remember that the responses you get will be personal responses filtered through our own individual filters. None of these responses will ever be the whole truth you would get from a Buddha (an enlightened being). But I'm pretty sure you already knew that.
As to my personal take on the existence of god, I should start by telling you that I was raised a Catholic, adored the stories of the saints when I was a child, was a Jesus freak in high school, and studied Christianity for a year in college. If it hadn't been for my faith in God and Jesus it's quite likely I wouldn't have survived my teen years. My home life was quite difficult and I was overly dramatic and oversensitive to an extreme. I felt like I was walking through life with no skin on. My faith in God and Jesus saved my life more than once in those days and again later in life before I found Buddhism.
But my faith in, and relationship with, God and Jesus was based entirely on need. I didn't know for sure that they existed although I said I did at the time. That was because of how desperately I needed them to exist and to exist on my terms; i.e. loving, helping, guiding, purely good, all powerful, etc. But the real down and dirty truth is that I had no proof whatsoever, other than my own imaginings, needs, and desires, that a creator god exists at all.
A few years before I found Buddhism I had developed a belief in reincarnation and during the last bout with great suffering it was my belief in reincarnation that kept me from suicide. I believed that killing myself would only result in my having to come back and do it all over again until I got it right. So suicide was completely pointless for me. (Reincarnation is different from the Buddhist belief in rebirth. You can look up the differences between the two if you like. It's interesting.)
I came to Buddhism when I finally got to the end of the rope I couldn't hang myself with and got absolutely and completely fed up with all my suffering. Relying on my faith in a creator god had saved my life but it hadn't done anything to reduce my suffering in any real or lasting sense. The Buddha taught only about suffering, its origins, and the way out of suffering. I didn't even know this when I started learning about Buddhism. I just chose to model myself after the happiest people I could imagine and they happened to be Buddhists. You can imagine my delight when I found out the Buddha taught the way out of suffering specifically because that's exactly what I needed. I needed concrete steps, things I could actually do, ways to actually develop my own mind, in order to reduce my suffering. I couldn't just leave all my suffering with God anymore. It just wasn't working. I had to be able to do something for myself on my own.
As I learned and practiced more the question of the existence of a creator god became more and more irrelevant to me. I needed God less and less and really began relying on myself more and more to pull myself out of the muck. I gained a confidence in myself and my ability to be able to live in this cruel world, something I never had before. Having even this small amount of proof that what the Buddha taught actually worked gave me the encouragement to keep going and I've never looked back.
I neither believe nor disbelieve in a creator god now. (But remember this is just my personal view and doesn't represent what the Buddha taught.) It's just not relevant to me. I'm learning to take charge of my own life and my own happiness now and I'm in the right place for me.
When someone asked the Buddha questions like "What is the origin of the cosmos?" and "What are the intricate workings of karma?" the Buddha said it would take longer than that persons lifetime to explain the answers to them and that those answers would still be irrelevant because they would have no impact on that person's suffering. He said that life is just too short to search for answers like those and that there was a way out of suffering that people could take right here and now. He used the analogy of a poisoned arrow to explain how irrelevant these questions were in the face of the suffering we experience. He said to imagine a man had been shot with a poisoned arrow but before the doctor could take it out the man insisted he be told who shot the arrow, what kind of wood the arrow was made from, and all sorts of other questions. Obviously finding the answers to these questions would have taken time and the man would have eventually died a painful death without having all his questions answered. How ridiculous when the doctor could have removed the poison arrow and the man could have lived.
The Buddha also said that contemplating these questions, the ones about the origin of the cosmos and the intricate workings of karma and so on, would lead one to a thicket of wrong views which at best would be a waste of very precious time and at worst could drive a person insane. (I can personally attest to the latter although it was quite temporary.
I consider the question of whether a creator god exists to be like the other questions the Buddha talked about when he said their contemplation would lead to a thicket of wrong views. I used to drive myself crazy thinking I had to know the answers to questions like these but I don't anymore. I'm far too busy getting happy.
My belief in God and Jesus kept me alive long enough to be able to hear and understand the Buddha's teachings. For that and many other reasons I owe Christianity a huge debt of gratitude. It's not my path anymore but I appreciate it greatly for what it gave me and what it can give others.
I hope this is of some help to you and I hope I haven't confused you even more with my ramblings. Good luck with your studies and have fun!
I'll sit quietly in the corner now and give someone else a chance to talk.
Palzang
Thanks Pally and and jj! Lol!!
(Just gotta say it's raining hard right now and the birds are singing and calling like crazy! I love when that happens. It makes me think they're all excited 'cuz the worms will be surfacing and the birds are going to have nice, big, easy meals. Isn't that awful of me? Lol!! I guess when the birds are happy I'm happy. I'll just stay in denial about the poor worms.)
I agree with Brigid that knowledge of the four noble truths and the noble eight-fold path are THE solution to suffering, and by practicing those your life will change. Much more perhaps than reliance on faith alone. I remember the phrase "God helps those who help themselves".
The logic of dependent co-arising negates G_d.
It precludes a first cause, or a causeless cause.
In this sense, Buddhism is non-theistic in view.
Jason
For those who refer to a god in the context of love, the universe, the oneness of things, etc, this is semantic nonsense. We already have English words for those concepts (i.e. love, universe, oneness) - tacking the "God" noun onto that is misleading and unnecessary.
Given that all of the scientific evidence points towards natural explainations for even the most complicated and "designed" of things, I see no reason to think that that same naturalness isn't true through and through. And I think the Buddha agreed
Well put, Fed. I was under the same impression after reading about the Thirty-one Planes of Existence. It may be a poor comparison, but I could see worshiping God while practicing Buddhism as something akin to worshiping a role model. Although there are times when they may seem omnipotent to us from a certain perspective, their existence is ultimately limited and bound by the laws of nature just as we are. Someone correct me if I'm going way out into left field here.
Breathtaking post! Don't stop writing them!
Palzang
This is as good a summary of my opinion on the matter as I've heard as well.
In addition, according to AN 3.61, the belief in a supreme being can be unskillful and "interfere with Dharma practice" if it leads to a denial of the efficacy of karma and a life of inaction:
That doesn't mean that people can't believe in G_d and still practice the Dharma, especially the Noble Eightfold Path, but it does mean that such a view can negatively impact that practice if held inappropriately.
As Simon rightly said, in relation to the Four Noble Truths and the practice of the Noble Eightfold Path, the matter of the existence of G_d is irrelevant and, ultimately, a distraction to be avoided.
Palzang
Like so many important questions, the one Brad originally asked doesn't have a black or white answer. When it comes to the place of a creator god in Buddhism I think Jason's two posts explain it well. When it comes to the question of what Buddhists think about a creator god there will be as many answers as there are Buddhists.
This may seem completely contradictory at first glance. After all, if the Buddha himself said, "There can be no creator god as a result of the reality of dependent origination and a belief in such a god can be a distraction from, and even detriment to, the work that must be done in order to lessen one's suffering", then as Buddhists it follows that we should take the same position as the Buddha.
However, a very famous Buddhist nun and teacher, Pema Chodron, put it perfectly when she said that we have to start where we are. To so many people born and raised in the West where a belief in a creator god is so prevalent and so deeply embedded in our cultures, coming to Buddhism may often mean coming with some kind of belief in a creator god. As I very deeply wish for the cessation of all people's suffering, I think this is better than not coming to Buddhism at all.
As one progresses in the practice of this Path, and as many people here have said, the belief in a creator god becomes more and more irrelevant to them. But for some of us a belief in god remains, for whatever reasons. Since it is impossible for one to enter into the mind of another it is inappropriate to question beliefs like these. They are there for purposes only truly known to the person who holds them. For all we know, a person's belief in a creator god may be the only thing keeping them alive at that time. This is why societies that appreciate individual freedom of thought enact laws protecting the right of people to believe as they see fit. These laws are profoundly beautiful expressions of collective respect for the mind and heart of the human being. As such they are also guides showing us how to behave appropriately to those who hold different views than ourselves; with respect.
More than anything else, the Buddha taught skillfulness; skillful thought, speech, and action. He stressed this teaching more often than the non existence of a creator god, especially to those new to the Path. He did this because he knew the Middle Way was the way out of suffering, because he knew things in this world are rarely black or white. Therefor he gave us guides we could rely on to navigate our way as flexibly as possible through the complexities of life.
So what may look like a contradiction at first glance becomes more understandable when we delve a little deeper while practicing flexibility of mind and respect for our fellow suffering human beings.
As another famous person said: "Whatever gets you through the night is alright, is alright." -John Lennon
Right back atcha, Brian!
Jason:
I am interested in your use of the term "G-d" which I understand is one of the ways in which the more orthodox Jews refer to what, among themselves, they call Adonai or Adoshem. If you mean it as a respectful gesture, why do you use the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, which must be offensive?
The same reason I picked "Elohim" as my screen name, because I feel like it.
Couldn't ask for a better answer, J. Thanks.
As far as I can understand in mainstream Christianity, God is an object and a matter for belief (sometimes called faith in their religion). In Buddhism, God is not an object of belief or devotion, rather in all matters, Buddhism calls for the matter of experience - of knowing, and all terms: Buddha/God/compassion and love are not exempt from this. To name it is easy, name anything, but to truly know? That is more rare. Best wishes.
My understanding jives most with federica's explanation. Buddhism has historically never truly been an agnostic or atheist tradition in the sense we 21st-century Westerners use those terms. As I understand it, Early Buddhism (i.e., the Buddhism recorded in the Pali Canon) speaks quite liberally of various gods and goddesses, however, they are described in terms far from the eternal, omniscient, all-powerful father figure of the Abrahamic traditions, or even the way most Hindus would describe them. They are described as subject to suffering and impermanence (this should not be surprising to anyone familiar with Indian mythology; gods and their incarnations battle one another, play tricks on each other, fall in and out of love, even murder one another) as human beings.
Most Buddhist teachers trying to find an audience in the West tend to wash over these aspects of Buddhism, and yet they have been part of Buddhist culture for the majority of its life in Asia. Chogyam Trungpa, perhaps the most influential Vajrayana teacher here in America (also through his pupil Pema chodron), psychologized Buddhism in presenting it to his Western audience: samsara, for instance, became no longer a literal cycle of birth/death/rebirth/etc. but a psychological phenomenon. Likewise, the Six Realms of Existence (which have been interpreted as literal realms for most of Vajrayana's history) become mental states.
Little tweaks like this from most of the popularizers of Buddhist teachings in the West (Alan Watts, Suzuki Roshi, Trungpa and Chodron, et al.) have contributed to a Western perception of Buddhism as an agnostic/athiest philosophy. While the emerging Western Buddhism certainly seems to be a largely agnostic movement (not a bad thing: Buddhism changes wherever to goes), this has not been true of Buddhism for most of history. One needs only look at the Dhammapada to see deities referenced quite matter-of-factly.
That said, as others have noted, deities are mostly irrelevant to Buddhist practice as a means of liberation from dukkha; that is the heart of the practical extent of the Buddha's teaching and a belief in a creator god in not necessarily contraindicated.