God and Buddhism

Greetings readers!

I believe in God. I am a Buddhist. Are these two views compatible, truly? Do most Buddhist sensibilities tend to go against any possibility of believing in God? Does it matter if we do believe in God or not as Buddhists? If we do, what kind of God would we believe in? 

These are all questions that many of us westerns face since God is always in our face somehow.

The idea of God and Buddhism has been explored by many scholars and has sat on the back of my mind and many of our readers, for sure.

I will not attempt to spell out or construct some kind of Buddhist theology because I don't think that's possible and that's how God likes it.

So why can't we construct a Buddhist theology? Are Buddhist questions and problems completely alien to the incorporation of Divinity?

There are two answers to this question and they both differ according to the way one views/believes in God. If one believes in God that is somehow above and separate from the world, is unchanged and can't change, is eternal and houses spiritual realms, then one has entered into fallacious and deluded ground. I do not believe there is much room for supernaturalism in the mind of modern folk. I state this across the board for any believer of anything. Supernaturalism not only enters into language it cannot speak, makes claims it cannot validate, damages the existential "make-up" of the person but also, strangely perpetuates conflict. 

The question now that I am begging is: is God necessarily a supernatural belief, and are all faiths that are theistic necessarily supernaturalistic? The obvious is no if one looks at an introduction to religious thought, or speaks to many modern believers. Yet, we must also not be under the misconception that every sensible person has the truth. (Not that I do....)

Buddhism does not escape supernaturalism often and remains atheistic in the same occasion making it another example that theistic belief is not an necessary part of any supernaturalism. Now that we have dismissed God from the corruption of supernaturalism where does God go?

This is where Buddhist "checks" can be setup to avoid ignorance, suffering, hate, and greed. The annihilation of supernaturalism is a big step in the process of clearing ignorance. We must constantly dig deeper, our endeavor is never over; we must constantly search for deeper premises. 

What kind of check ensures we do not suffer because of a faulty view in God? (All things are connected.) Can God decide to act in this world, intervening on certain occasion? Is God a player in history? The Buddhist answer is no. Is God a player in history is much more complicated and and a short no will not suffice. Buddhism demands transparency, proclaims temporality and an intensity of Life in the moment and those things are only "part" of God. I will come back to this.

Does God demand? Does God demand things that are not God's? Does God perpetuate a greed---my prayers are more and better than your prayers. Does righteousness, which is a combination of greed, hatred, and ignorance have any place within Buddhism?

We have setup a huge roadblock for God. There are a lot of things God cannot be:

1) a "being" outside the world.

2) Completely absolute with no connection to life lived in the moment.

3) the answerer of the traditional, or more supernatural intended prayers. 

4) supernatural 

5) an understood concept that is exhausted by words. We have no such capability. If we have any honesty at all then we ought to know that our most intense and mindful endeavors in the pursuit will only lead us to Wisdom and not always to answers.

6) God cannot be described in any anthropomorphic terms. No male, no female, no thinking....you see where this is going? (The heart sutra)

So if God cannot be certain things then it is not God. It goes against the very definition of God to be limited outright in so many ways. This is a valid point. Creating a God of the gaps, a concept that places God in any moment where "mystery" pops up in language that is alien, or damaging. God is not the explanation for any astronomical mystery, however twisted, from creation onward. This is just as reductionist as limiting God.

So what now? I stated earlier that we are on a constant pursuit for premises. Buddhism gives us tools to avoid certain blocks that will lead us away from a vision of awareness and mindful community. God must be a center, no, the center of all of this. From the depths of the abyss in the complexity of the Heart Sutra, the great call to Live Life on the Path comes with such assurance that it is a path worth walking. We know this because we breath every moment and think-I made it here-then breath again and stop thinking. The intensity of all experience that is felt only partially by humans is felt by all of the Universe itself, fully, in its transparency, in its awkward Absoluteness, in its totality.

Must we believe in God? No. Some would say that we do no matter what, some proclaim an entirely pluralist vision, I'm not sure where I stand. 

None of this is supernatural; it is more than humanistic because it affirms life with a grounding in reality itself and no temporal contract that we have written up.

We check as Budddhists that God can only be God if God is completely present in every single experience while being completely transparent as such. The absoluteness of God is language that Buddhism doesn't really speak, and that's okay. Yet God can be the center of it all, the confidence in the life of the path, the (for me, also Jewish) the burning bush dynamically burning my feet as I tread incinerating paths of wisdom.

Moment after Moment

The stars seem so bright this evening. I’ve forgotten how amazing it is to stir my sight into the night sky, lying down on the soft spring grass, allowing my mind to drift where it may through the vastness of space and time. To see the stars is to see the past. As science now understands it, light from the stars takes a very long time to reach us, so we are literally watching the past tumble forward before us. In fact, it is said, if one were to take a spacecraft off earth, going faster than the speed of light, and then be able to turn around, watching with a 'God-Like' telescope, we could see the previous events of Earth unfold.

Albert Einstein theorized that time is relative; its properties are dependent on the density and speed of matter over a given area of space. The faster an object moves, the slower it changes, and the more stationary the object, the faster it changes. Sometimes boredom can make time seem to go so slow, can’t it? And conversely, the busier one becomes, the faster time seems to pass? Isn’t time really just a measurement of change, just a human conception that helps us manage our daily activities of life by compartmentalizing the hours and days?

I think because of change, it is inherent in our human intelligence and desire to see impermanent objects as having a beginning and an end; a creation and destruction, form and substance. Maybe many of us assume that the universe, or all that ever existed, must have had a beginning and therefore will have an end. In the same line of thought, perhaps one would bring up a God as the creator, and then the inevitable follow up question will arise, “But who created God?”. This is all silly. If we just closely paid attention, we could see that nothing exists separately from anything else. We would see that all things arise, because of everything else around it, and nothing exists independent of anything else. As one of my favorite blogger's, Jody Wieler so eloquently wrote

"...reminds me of music, where that chord or note that you hear right now, only makes sense because of what came before it, and where it resolves to in the next moment to come - in a sense, we exist in an eternal state of commingled past, present and future, where each can only be truly known as all are considered."

Buddhists teachings have talked about a beginning-less beginning, and an endless end. The ancient masters try to point out to us that perhaps, our idea of creation and time are just human inventions, and maybe all that is and will ever be has always been and at the same time never was. It is not a God that creates the objects of the world, but only our minds. To see the world as if one moment ends and another begins is a false impression. Moment after moment does not exist. Only this one present moment exists, ever changing and eternal.

I think our thoughts are much like these stars, dwelling on the past, watching them rise and fade, innumerable, unquenchable, so distant from this very moment, one after another. Our minds seem embraced in a mortal dance with creation, splitting the world from one to many. It seems to wrap itself up in the passing moments of the world, labeling and judging each object, giving them permanence and form.

Bruce Lee once wrote,

“Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception. To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Awareness has no frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion.”

Ah, too much idealism and conceptualizing in this writing. I think I’ll go back to lying on the grass, watching the stars turn in the night sky. Maybe I can forget myself for just a moment in the melodic freedom and blissful rhythm of this moment. There is plenty of time until the dawn comes, right? The stars are so beautiful, and I wish not to lose them.

Society Without God: a review

(note: this is quite a bit more lengthy than a typical blog post)

Abstract: In today’s rapidly evolving religious climate, few studies have been made of secularity in the modern world. Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist from California, brings us Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment to help fill that void. It is an ambitious project, blending personal stories and sociological data gathering, as well as historical, political and theological insights. For those of us in America who can feel that our country is a bit (religiously) strange, but can’t quite put our finger on how and why, this is the perfect book. It is, indeed, an apology for secularism, showing how it is woven into the wonderful societies of Denmark and Sweden. For readers of Progressive Buddhism, we find questions of “Cultural Religion,” discussions of issues such as belonging vs. believing, and perhaps some hints at where we as individuals as well as Buddhism as a whole will fit in to the above-mentioned rapidly changing religious climate.

~

There have been two noteworthy trends in our society of late. The first is the rise in somewhat hokey movies (Signs, Henry Pool is Here) and some not-so-hokey ones (The Passion of the Christ) trying to convince us of the existence of God or miracles. And the second is the recent boom in psychology, popular writing, and even philosophy, trying to describe and teach us the so-called science of happiness, the art of happiness, or (one of my favorites) the accident of Stumbling on Happiness.

It has become commonplace in America to equate religiosity with happiness, with some even pointing to social and sociological studies suggesting the greater contentment of believers. Atheists (and often Buddhists by implication), now as much as ever, have quite a challenge in modern American society. In one scene in Henry Pool is Here, a movie I only watched because it was shown on a plane, two of Henry’s nosy neighbors are talking about him and one says (I paraphrase), “he seems so unhappy,” to which the other replies, “well, no wonder, he is an atheist.”

It is perfectly acceptable or perhaps even common sense, it seems, to connect atheism and unhappiness. As a Buddhist (and atheistic), this is not only ignorant, but offensive. It is an assumption based only on prejudice. What if they had observed instead that he seems angry: “well, no wonder, he is a Muslim” or wealthy: “well, no wonder, he is a Jew.”? Attacks on atheists seem to slip through the cracks in our society, perhaps simply because they are so widespread. Indeed, Zuckerman recounts the vitriol spewed by a half-dozen media pundits and religious leaders from Bill O’Reilly to Pat Robertson (pp. 19-20). All make similar and patently false statements regarding the demise of any society lacking a robust faith in God.

Religion, and by that I mean mostly the Religious Right, has exerted itself mightily in the last twenty years in America despite, scandals and abuses. And whether it is a science, an art, or an accident, happiness is a hot topic these days. It is into this melting pot that Phil Zuckerman throws his latest work: Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment. In this book Zuckerman takes us to Denmark and Sweden, two countries that seem today to be less religious than ever (p.2).

It’s a difficult book to classify. It is the work of a trained sociologist and thus carries the mark of that discipline: interviews, data, statistics, and the analytical tools needed to make sense of it all. But it is also something of a travel-log by an intelligent atheistic American in an amazing society that, as he points out, so many Americans would not – could not – believe exists. As he says in the end of chapter 2, after describing an idyllic bus ride through a major city in Denmark, “So many Americans assume that without strict obedience to biblical laws, society would be chaotic and horrific. If only they could take this ride with me, I thought to myself” (p.31).

The third genre is something of a socio-religious biography of the people, 149 formal interviews with adult Scandinavians of all ages, education levels, and jobs. The sample, while large and in some ways random, did have a ‘convenience’ factor (meaning Zuckerman interviewed people who were readily available and even sought some out based on interesting conversations or their occupation) so it shouldn’t be misconstrued as representing the entire Scandinavian population. (see note 1 at bottom) It is in these interviews that one gets the best feel for Scandinavian life and thought, as you hear the views of so many ‘average’ people. These interviews reveal a richness of life in family, friendships, and social responsibilities all without a faith in God.

The very existence of the people in these interviews and their stories would not be remarkable, Zuckerman points out, if they were the exception to the rule in Scandinavia. In fact, atheists are the norm. Their existence and the flourishing of these “Godless” societies should put an end not only about the vitriol of the Pat Robertsons of the world, but also those who attempt to show by science that we are ‘hard wired’ for faith in God (cf. pp.55-56). If only it were so simple.

Interestingly, in interview after interview the Scandinavians speak of their society as being based on the ethics of the Bible, following ideals of kindness to others, honesty, and so forth. To them it seems that it is these teachings that are important, not the belief in God, heaven, or hell – not to mention biblically motivated anti-Semitism, discrimination of homosexuals, or denial of women’s reproductive rights. And Scandinavian society reflects just this: higher openness, a welfare state (based on the belief that free education and healthcare benefits everyone), strong community relations, the virtual eradication of poverty, and so on. Many of these same interviewees hypothesize that in past generations, when belief in God was far more prominent, the reason was precisely the lack of equity and stability in society. As life became better, as the society became more socialist (to use an overly and unduly harangued term), the need for religious belief simply fell away.

Further into his analysis, Zuckerman covers this very idea in his discussion of Why? (chapter 6). Several theories are presented, including the idea that “Secure Societies” are more likely to be irreligious. Other theories suggest that “Lazy Monopolies” – in this case the Lutheran church – lead to decline or that “Working Women” no longer keep their husbands and children in the churches. What we find is that while some theories match up remarkably well in Sweden and Denmark (all three of these, in fact), it is impossible to pin the cause of secularism on any one of them. Each also faces counterexamples elsewhere in the world.

Society Without God includes a history of religion in these countries, attempting, albeit very cautiously, to discern the religiosity of these people over the last 1000 or so years. We also find a discussion of what it means to be a Christian (chapter 8). Reflecting on his own (very secular) Jewish upbringing, Zuckerman suggests that Scandinavian Christians are similarly “culturally” religious while personally atheistic or agnostic. As Christmas draws near I wonder how many of us (Buddhists and otherwise) might consider ourselves "culturally Christian." Most of us will do something on Christmas, even if it is simply spending a little extra time with family. And if we put up a tree, exchange gifts, put up lights, and God (ahem, I mean Buddha) help us, sing Christmas songs together, then we are “participating in something ostensibly religious, without actually believing its supernatural elements” (p.155). Ergo we are being culturally Christian.

Zuckerman concludes his study with thoughts from back in the US. Within hours of his return, he finds himself in the house of a born-again Christian showing off his “new toy” (a handgun). Ahh, how things change. Then, at a bank, he overhears an employee advising a debt-ridden patron to see a pastor to pray over the indebted person’s bills, give $50 a month to his ministry, and trust that “within a year, God will see to it that your debt is all gone” (p.167). Traveling from a land where God is practically obsolete to trusting Him with your personal debt must have been quite a shock. It was also traveling from a land of general contentment, good health, and security to a country with only moderate life-satisfaction, a perilous (despite being technologically spectacular) health-care system and depressingly high rates of violence.

If one could criticize the book, it would be on the grounds that it is too ambitious. In trying to tell so many stories in under two hundred pages, Zuckerman stretches the bounds of his own expertise and potentially the patience of his readers. Despite its core of sociological data-collecting, it is clear that the book is in fact an extended musing on the fairly personal topic of religion by a young and talented scholar. Yet it is difficult to imagine the book being anything other than what it is. Cut out the interviews and history and it loses its punch, remove the personal stories and ties to politics and contentment and it loses its emotive appeal. This reader was both very satisfied in this book, seeing much more clearly that (in the US) it needn’t be this way - we can be happy and safe without faith in God, and at the same time I left yearning for more.

1) Zuckerman goes over his methodology in a brief appendix.

The Face of God (Part 2 of 2)

I came across this article which ties in nicely with what I said in my earlier post The Face of God with regards to the duality between two views or aspects of the concept of God.

The concept has two aspects (one of which in Christianity has three faces - the Holy trinity). Some theists see God as having one aspect or the other, while most Churches see one as a manifestation of the other. The two aspects of God are:

Anthropomorphic

This is the more familiar concept of a personal God who feels, thinks and acts, who creates, who is jealous, who forgives, who smites enemies and who impregnated a virgin. This is similar to the polytheistic view of a personified deity as a powerful and manifested being which is 'in the world'. In Christianity, God manifests in three ways known together as the Holy Trinity - the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Transcendent

This is the mystical view of God as the ineffable, unknowable, deepest source of reality, and which in some interpretations equals the sum total of existence.

As 'The All' God would appear to be indistinguishable from the deepest principles of physics (and/or the source of them if physics is a manifestation of something deeper). Some theists adhere to this view of God alone. Advocates of such a view include the philosopher Spinoza. The Vedantic school of Hindu philosophy sees Brahman in a similar way as the ground of all being.

Interestingly, this concept of - and mystical experiences of - this All or Ultimate seem to be the place where all religions meet. The differences are in the metaphysics produced in the act of interpretation. Even poly-theistic religions tend to have a more abstract 'greater god' of some sort, of which all other gods are manifestations. Non-theistic religions and philosophers have similar ideas, for example, the concept of the Tao and Buddhist concepts like Dharmadhatu. Schopenhauer's concept of the noumenon is also related. The linguistic philosopher Wittgenstein 'talks around' a reality which cannot be spoken of: "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence" and went as far as giving a positive endorsement of mysticism "Feeling the world as a limited whole -- it is this that is mystical"

Some scientists such as have similar holistic but non-theistic concepts of the cosmos, which border on or even embrace the mystical.

A human being is part of the whole called by us universe , a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.

Einstein

When Hawking occasionally talks in terms of God it seems to be more in terms of a hypothetical omnipotent creator being.

And in their quests for a single unifying theory - and as a result of their research - scientists aknowledge the 'oneness' of phenomena, although this is a unity which is generally believed to be physical from top to bottom since, although science does not depend on it, there is to a large extent an unchallenged acceptance of the metaphysical philosophy of Physicalism (also misleadingly referred to as Materialism). Also this unity is to be understood primarily conceptually and mathematically rather than realised existentially.

The view of God as a symbol for the ineffable unutterable deepest reality or source of reality is easier to defend philosophically because such an 'entity' is being described largely in negative terms - it is that which cannot be spoken and about which therefore no claims can be made. Interestingly such a view of God (as the linked article above indicates) is that of a being which cannot truly be said to exist, since the transcendent cannot belong to the set of things that exist.

Some Jewish, Christian and Muslim Medieval philosophers, including Moses Maimonides and Pseudo-Dionysius, as well as many sages of other religions, developed what is termed as Apophatic Theology or the Via Negativa, the idea that one cannot posit attributes to God and can only be discussed by what God is not. For example, we cannot say that God "exists" in the usual sense of the term, because that term is human defined and Gods qualities such as existance may not be accurately characterized by it. What we can safely say is that God is not nonexistent. Likewise God's "wisdom" is of a fundamentally different kind from limited human perception. So we cannot use the word "wise" to describe God, because this implies he is wise in the way we usually describe humans being wise. However we can safely say that God is not ignorant. We should not say that God is One, because we may not truly understand his nature, but we can state that there is no multiplicity in God's being.

Source

Compare these statements with the negative philosophy of Buddhist philosophers such as Nagarjuna.

Neither from itself nor from another, Nor from both, Nor without a cause, Does anything whatever, anywhere arise.

Nagarjuna

In the Midhyamakakirikis, Nagarjuna attacks this attempt to absolutize Buddhist praxis by utilizing a system of logic that offers negative responses to four possible alternatives. Called the catuskoti, it is often depicted in the following form:

1. It is not the case that x is Ø.
2. It is not the case that x is not-Ø.
3. It is not the case that x is both Ø and not-Ø.
4. It is not the case that x is neither Ø nor not-Ø.

Nagarjuna uses this fourfold logic against a whole series of arguments ranging from causality, the self, the aggregates, production, destruction, permanence, impermanence, space, time, motion, and so forth. Against a particular view of causation, for example, Nagarjuna applies the catuskoti and concludes that dharmas (x) are not produced (Ø), not non-produced, not both, and not neither. Or, against a particular view of motion, he applies the dialectic and concludes that motion (x) is not moving (Ø), not non-moving, not both, and not neither.

source

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"Nagarjuna (c.150-250 CE) ... realized at a profound level the difficulties of carrying out Buddhist discourse in the medium of language, and the degree of attachment that could occur with even such subtle concepts as shunyata. Therefore he endeavored to prevent people from falling into the error of attaching to Emptiness as a "something" or as "non-existence."

He made his project an exercise in consciousness that sought to free people from being limited in thought by the linguistic options of "this or that" and "existence or non-existence." He did this by taking Buddhist philosophical terms and putting them into his formula of "neither x nor not-x." According to this formula, existence is "neither empty nor not empty," "neither samsara nor nirvana." Nagarjuna's teachings are not something new ontologically speaking, but were developments toward a more advanced logical form that can be seen in his Madhyamaka-karikas.

source

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In these texts, he strove to stop the reification of the concept of emptiness by: (1) stressing the non-difference between emptiness and dependent origination; (2) by emphasizing the understanding of emptiness as a mental attitude which pays attention to the non-attachment to concepts and theories. That is, emptiness should not be made into a theory to be clung to (as are other philosophical and religious doctrines). According to Nagarjuna, he who does so is like "a customer to whom a merchant has said that he has nothing to sell and the customer now asks to buy this 'nothing' and carry it home."For Nagarjuna, emptiness should not be interpreted ontologically, but rather in the way of the parable of the raft: The Buddhist teaching (especially shunyata), is like the raft one constructs for the crossing of a river. Once the river is crossed, the purpose of the raft has been served. It may now be discarded.

The same is true of emptiness: it should not be held on to; one who does hold on to it will have trouble functioning in life. In this sense, emptiness could also be compared to a laxative: once the obstruction has passed, there is no need to continue taking it. Nagarjuna wrote extensively, and his teachings resulted in the formation of an Indian school called Madhyamika or the "Middle Way School."

source

Having their ineffable and speaking it

When debating with theists I tend to find that they oscillate between these two positions. God is treated as an existent thing in many ways - as an existent person - a moral agent with human-like attributes who performs acts and who has feelings and thoughts. This is the entity that proclaims the moral absolutes which theists use as justification not only for changing their own behaviour but at times for oppressing others and for acts of violence, in other words this is the 'fully knowable' God that enters the political arena.

When challenged about apparent contradictions in the supposed attributes of God or conflicts between those attributes and His behaviour theists often retreat their God into a 'cloud of unknowing' a place of free-form mysticism where paradox is not only permissable but a defining, positive sign of God's transcendent divinity.

Is this so different from the non-rationality of Buddhism, for example, the paradoxes of Nagarjuna or of Zen koans? I hear you ask.

Buddhism (correctly understood) does not claim to be or have an absolute truth, it can only ever be a finger that points at reality, which is ineffable. Buddhism is a provisional 'skillful means' and thus its attempts to influence the political, scientific or intellectual spheres are likely to be less absolutist and more tolerant. A Japanese Buddhist cleric historically explained the virtual absence of conflict between Zen and other sects as being due to it having no doctrine at all.

Many theists on the other hand want to have their cake and eat it. They want a God who is mysterious, transcendent, unknowable and unspeakable, yet will provide absolute support for their moral and metaphysical pronouncements. How do they get away with it? In Christianity, God is traditionally described in terms of the Trinity - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are manifestations of God, which is nevertheless described as a unity and as 'infinitely simple'. This infinitely simple and unchanging being is supposed to be the active, willful source of all the complexity there is. It seems to me that only through a mixture of blind faith and a sort of mystical agnosticism that such a contradictory nature seems to be acceptable. These are the sorts of statements that I've heard from theists on this matter:
'God is unknowable and anything is possible with God.'
'I see and how can you know that?'
'It is possible to have partial knowlege of God'
'If you don't know what you don't know then how can you know what you know?'
'I just know.'

It is in this way that Christians emerge from their own 'cloud of unknowing' to make oh-so-confident proclamations about the nature of God and His will - to declare what is right and wrong, what is true and every so often to smite their own enemies or justify such actions.

Personally I don't have knowledge or experience of anthropomorphic or any other sort of deities and I tend to think that the ineffable is better handled by the likes of Wittgenstein "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence" and by concepts of the Tao and Buddhist concepts of Dharmadhatu and Sunyata, since the 'emptiness', relativity and provisional nature of these concepts is pre-built, well-defined and well-accepted. It's interesting to note also that neither of these indicators of the ultimate is, correctly understood, transcendent since they refer to reality itself.

In my view God is the Tao, misunderstood and as we know

The Tao that can be told of is not the eternal Tao;
the name that can be named is not the eternal name.

This was originally published in my personal blog in 2006.
Photo courtesy of Reverend Brendan Powell Smith

The Face of God (Part 1 of 2)

Personally, I've never had a belief in God, and tended to believe that the Abrahamic (why do people say 'Judeo-Christian' and exclude Islam?) concept of God and 'His' supposed purposes were incoherent. That doesn't mean that I didn't have a strong sense of 'spirituality', it just means that I didn't attach it to a concept of an anthropomorphic creator being. It was nature/existence itself that awed me.

Some Zen teachers occasionally talk in terms of 'God' - even the iconoclastic Brad Warner sometimes does. The word is being used as a way of expressing a Buddhist idea in 'Western' terms. However, the concept used here is far from the Abrahamic concept of a separate, self-existent, supernatural and (always to at least some extent) anthropomorphic creator used by most theists. Personally I tend to think that it should be avoided to prevent confusion.

There are some people - mainly Christian-Buddhist hybrids (not sure how that works) and Christians looking for common ground who try very hard to show that Buddhism and Christianity are essentially saying the same thing. I think that ultimately there may be an element of truth in this, but I think that a great deal of damage is done to a concept such as Sunyata (emptiness) by trying to squeeze it into a God-shaped hole. I tend to think that the concept of God is, in part, derived from experiences of 'no-self' and 'oneness', interpreted as a cosmic event - a union between a discreet self (individual soul) and a discreet Absolute (Godhead). This is naive and simplistic compared with the subtlety and sophistication of Nagarjuna's concept of Sunyata and Dogen's (and others') descriptions of the relationship between relative and absolute. In Buddhism, the denial of a separate self (anatman) and a separate absolute (nirvana) are key concepts. The rest as far as I can tell is a naive search for explanations which will fit into our common-sense conceptual structure on the basis of faulty logic and blind faith.

Even putting aside all the issues of evidence and the validity of 'personal revelation', and all the problems of Biblical literalism, I find the concept incoherent. Here is a small selection of the questions I think the idea of God begs:

Why would an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being use methods of improving his creations, which required great suffering, (existence, freewill, evil, evolution) with no sign of resulting improvement?

Why would a perfect being need to create humanity let alone need its love?

Events/changes require time to occur in, so how could the creation of space-time occur before there was any time for it occur?

The usual answer to these sorts of questions is some variant of 'God works in mysterious ways', but this comes back to How do you know He works in mysterious ways?, How do you know the Bible is infallibly true?, How do you know that God exists?, How do you know (enough to make claims about it) what God is like?. Blind faith - a personal feeling of conviction isn't valid, as demonstrated by the number of people who have absolute faith in their beliefs and yet who contradict each other or who are demonstrably false and/or insane. Faith in Buddhist practice, as I understand it, is of a more ordinary sort - like the faith of a climber in his ropes. The 'intuitive knowing' described about 'enlightened masters' is something else - 'knowing' is not quite the right word and it is not knowledge of anything supernatural or metaphysical - rather, it is just being fully attentive to reality, absent of certain illusions we have about it.

I find it interesting that the less literal the interpretation of Biblical and traditional explanations of God are - the more 'ineffable' they are, the less problematic they become, because such claims are less concrete. Instead of the jealous tribal god Yahweh who lives on Mount Sinai and smites the enemies of Israel, God becomes a cosmic source or principle beyond space and time, almost equivalent to the deepest laws of physics. A consequence of this is that the more anthropomorphic supposed 'purposes' of this entity start to become absurd. 'God is the unknowable source, the will of nature, the very ground of all being...and He hates gays.'

If God is a synonym for the deepest principles of physics, what word is left for a hypothetical being who answers prayers, intervenes to save cancer patients or helps evolution over difficult jumps, forgives sins or dies for them?

Richard Dawkins

I came across this excerpt and really enjoyed it. I know that 'Zen talk' can seem pretty bizzare so I've added my interpretations of what Seung Sahn said.

After one of the Dharma Teachers was finished with his introductory remarks, he asked those congregated to direct their questions to Zen Master Seung Sahn, Soen Sa Nim. One of the visitors asked if there was a God.

Soen Sa answered "If you think God, you have God, if you do not think God, you do not have God."
[God and the absence of God are mental constructs]

"I think that there is no God. Why do I have God if I think God?"

"Do you understand God?"

"No, I don't know."

"Do you understand yourself?"

"I don't know."

"You do not understand God. You do not understand yourself. How would you even know if there was a God or not?"

"Then, is there a God?"

"God is not God, no God is God."
[Apart from our mental contruction there is inherently no God or absence of God. Alternatively - the Ultimate (God) and nothingness/absence of inherent nature/interdependence are the same. ]

"Why is God not God?"

Holding up the Zen stick, Soen Sa said "This is a stick, but it is not a stick. Originally, there is no stick. It is the same with God for originally there is no God. God is only name. The same is true of all things in the universe."
[Conventionally sticks exist, but ultimately they do not, for their nature is dependent. The same is true for God.]

"Then is there no God?"

"The philosopher Descartes said, 'I think therefore I am.' If you do not think, you are not, and so the universe and you are one. This is your substance, the universe's substance, and God's substance. It has no name and no form. You are God, God is you. This is the 'big I,' this is the path, this is the truth. Do you now understand God?"
[All things (including 'God' and 'no God') are ultimately of one substance. Is this God? It cannot be named.]

"Yes, I think that there is no God, and I have no God."

"If you say that you have no God, I will hit you thirty times. If you say that you do, I will still hit you thirty times."
[By saying there is or there is not a God, the visitor is trapped by thought and language and unable to apprehend reality as it is before conceptual thought distorts it. Reality is not found at either of these extremes but in a non-conceptual 'Middle Road' between them. The threat of violence is just gentle encouragement.]

"Why will you hit me? I don't understand. Please explain."

"I do not give acupuncture to a dead cow. Today is Tuesday." replied Soen Sa.
[This is a waste of time. Forget all that abstract stuff - this is reality].

I just found this short little piece, which I also like:

Zen Master (to student): Do you know God?
Student: I don't know
ZM, Do you know Buddha?
Stu, I don't know
ZM, Do you hear the waterfall?
Stu, Yes
ZM, Just That.
[Forget your ideas about God or Buddha - the sound of the waterfall is the real 'God'/'Buddha' ie. ultimate reality, not some idea about something transcendent but reality itself]

This was originally published in my personal blog in 2006.
Photo courtesy of Reverend Brendan Powell Smith

Book Review: Basic Teachings of the Buddha by Glenn Wallis

I found this book by chance in the Buddhist section of Borders bookshop. From the title, I assumed it was one of the many introductions to Buddhism that tend to inhabit the shelves of such shops - and indeed I imagine that the purchasers at Borders assumed the same thing. But, in that respect the title is misleading, for although the author indeed focuses on a few suttas from Pali Canon which he considers to define the fundamentals, this is not ordinary introduction aimed at the casual reader.

Wallis is an associate professor of religion at Georgia and has a PhD in Sanskrit and Indian Studies from Harvard. The book he has written cuts through cliched translations of Buddhist terminology and popular assumtions of what practicing the dharma means, revealing the Buddha's teachings as a highly rational and pragmatic methodology based on direct, empirical, personal experience.

I didn't find myself convinced by every one of Professor Wallis' interpretations. For example, there is a passage from the Tevijja Sutta, in which two Brahman's ask the Buddha which is the direct path to communion with God, and Buddha refutes the notion that the 'religious authorities' know such a path, instructs them in the way of the dharma and tells them that this is the path to communion with God. Wallis interprets this as a refutation of the very idea of God and infatuation with it. But I see nothing supporting that in the text. Instead it seems to me, an example of the provisionality of the teaching of the dharma, of teaching not in absolute terms of fact, but in terms what can be understood by the listener and what will aid the listener in awakening - he taught in terms of 'God' because that was the language and the conceptual system being used by the Brahmans.

Nevertheless, this is a highly insightful and refreshing read - a must for every progressive Buddhist.

4.5 Stars