Do Buddhists Believe in God?

Do Buddhists Believe in God?
A talk given by Kusala Bhikshu
urbandharma.org

Why is it... The Buddha never talked about the One God of the desert, the Judeo-Christian God? Does this mean that all Buddhists are atheists and don’t believe in God? Did the Buddha believe in God?

These are some of the questions I would like to try and answer today.

The Buddha was born 500 years before Christ, in what is now Nepal. His dad was a king, his mom was a queen, and his dad wanted him to take over the family business (the kingdom) when he got older.

The kind of world the Buddha was born into was magical. Everything seemed to be alive. The trees, mountains, lakes, and sky were living and breathing with a variety of gods in charge. If you needed rain you asked one god, if you needed it to stop raining you asked another. The priests of India did all the religious work, and got paid for it.

In India at the time of the Buddha you became a priest if you were born into the right family, and not because of the school you went to, or the grades you got.

There were other kinds of religious people as well.

Mendicants were men who left their family, friends, and jobs to find the answers to life. They did not live in homes or apartments, but lived under trees and in caves, and would practice meditation all day long. They wanted to really be uncomfortable, so they could understand what suffering was all about.

Many kinds of meditation were practiced by these mendicants. In Tranquility Meditation for instance, you think about just one thing, like looking at a candle or saying a word over and over. When the mind becomes focused in oneness, you experience a great peacefulness.

Even if the mendicants were sitting in the rain on a cold day, they were still content. They found in their meditation practice the essence of happiness.

Renunciation is when you give up all the things that make your life pleasant. Sometimes the people with money and power in India would buy a lot of stuff to make themselves happy and their lives more comfortable, thinking that happiness and comfort depended on what they owned.

When the mendicants could see their own suffering clearly, after many years of renunciation, they understood that happiness was not dependent on the things they owned, but the kind of life they lived.

Even all the gods in India could not end the suffering of one human being.

At the age of 29, the Buddha stopped praying to the gods to end his suffering and the suffering of others. He left his family and friends, went to the edge of the forest, took off all his clothes and jewelry, covered his naked body with rags of cloth, cut off his hair and started to meditate.

He became a mendicant, and It took him six years of hard work and much suffering, but in the end he was able to stop his suffering forever (Nirvana) and help others stop their suffering as well.

Did the Buddha believe in God, the One God of the desert, the God of the Christians, Jews and Muslims?

Well... No... He didn't... Monotheism (only one God) was a foreign concept to the Buddha, his world was filled with many gods. The creator god Brahma being the most important one.

At the time of the Buddha, the only people practicing the religion of the One God of the desert, were the Jews. Remember, it was still 500 years before Christ came into the world.

The Buddha never left India. The Buddha walked from village to village... In his entire lifetime he never went any further than 200 miles from his birthplace.

The Buddha never met a Jew... And because of this, he never said anything about the One God of the desert.

There is also nothing in the teachings of the Buddha that suggest how to find God or worship the god's of India, although the Buddha himself was a theist (believed in gods), his teachings are non-theistic.

The Buddha was more concerned with the human condition: Birth, Sickness, Old age, and Death. The Buddhist path is about coming to a place of acceptance with these painful aspects of life, and not suffering through them.

Please be clear on this point... The Buddha is not thought of as a god in Buddhism and is not prayed to. He is looked up to and respected as a great teacher, in the same way we respect Abraham Lincoln as a great president.

He was a human being who found his perfection in Nirvana. Because of his Nirvana, the Buddha was perfectly moral, perfectly ethical, and ended his suffering forever.

Does that mean that every Buddhist in the world is an atheist?

No!!! I have met a lot of Buddhists who believe in God. I have met a lot of Buddhists who don’t believe in God... And a lot of Buddhists just don’t know.

All three points of view are OK if you’re Buddhist because suffering is more important than God in Buddhism.

Sometimes a student will ask me how everything in this world got started... "If you don’t have God in Buddhism then who or what caused the universe?"

When the Buddha was asked how the world started, he kept silent. In the religion of Buddhism we don’t have a first cause, instead we have a never ending circle of birth and death. In this world and in all worlds, there are many beginnings and ends. The model of life used in Buddhism has no starting place... It just keeps going and going.

Now having said that... If you’re a Buddhist it’s OK to believe God was the first cause... It really doesn't go against the teachings of the Buddha, his focus was on suffering... It's also OK to believe science has the answer… Like the big bang theory, etc... Some Buddhist’s don’t even care how it all started, and that’s fine too. Knowing how the world started is not going to end your suffering, it’s just going to give you more stuff to think about.

I hope you can see that God is not what Buddhism is about... Suffering is... And if you want to believe in God, as some Buddhists do, I suppose it's OK. But, Buddhist's don't believe God can end suffering. Only the teaching's of the Buddha can help us end suffering through wisdom and the activity of compassion.

In his whole life and in all his teachings the Buddha never said anything about the One God of the desert.

It really doesn't go against the teachings of the Buddha, his focus was on suffering...

But it does.

If one thinks a super Being created ourselves and/or the universe, that is a direct contradiction to the karmic dependent appearance that Buddha taught. If one thinks God is a refuge, that also directly contradicts the Refuge precepts of only the Triple Jewel being our refuge. There are other reasons.

So if the bhikshu wants to say it is OK with him, that is fine. It is also fine with me for people to believe in any mish-mash they like, I do not mind. But theism does go against the teachings of the Buddha and to say that it does not, is wrong.

Forgotten the sutta, but Buddha met and talked to Brahma, the Creator God. Brahma admitted, on the quiet, to Buddha, that his followers thought he was the Supreme Being, Creator of All etc., but Brahma knew he was not, as did Buddha.

A Dzogchen perspective:

Let us analyze the meaning of the name Kunjed Gyalpo. The literal translation, "all-creating king", is really a synonym for "Samantabhadra", a term widely used in Dzogchen teachings. The first word, Kunjed, "all-creating" or "all-making", may lead one to think of a universal creator, an entity that generates the world through an act of will; however, it must absolutely not be interpreted that way. Its true meaning denotes our primordial state, that by its own nature contains all the qualities of self-perfection together with the capacity to manifest them without needing to create them, nor rely on any effort. Think of a mirror: the capacity to reflect is a natural quality of the mirror itself, and it is only thanks to this condition that diverse images can appear on its surface uninterruptedly.

At a deper level, the true meaning of the term kun, which means "all", is emptiness, inasmuch as the ultimate nature of all phenomena is the condition of original purity (ka dag), or emptiness. Jed, a verb meaning "to do", or "to act", refers to the natural energy of emptiness that, being endowed with movement and action, manifests as clarity (gsal ba), vision (snang ba), and pure instantaneous presence (rig pa) ...

The term gyalpo, or "king", is used to denote the principal tantras ... it signifies the principle of knowledge that corresponds to the total perfection of the primordial state ... our authentic, original condition.

Chogyal Namkhai Norbu Rimpoche, Preface to Kunjed Gyalpo.

Listen, great being! I will teach you that, being my manifestation from the beginning, all phenomena are the pure dimension of emptiness. ... As I am the substance whence everything arises, the five great elements, the three worlds and the six classes of beings are my only body, my voice and my mind: I myself create my own nature. ... I am the supreme source of everything, pure and total consciousness.

Kunjed Gyalpo.

Will wrote:

It really doesn't go against the teachings of the Buddha, his focus was on suffering...

But it does.

If one thinks a super Being created ourselves and/or the universe, that is a direct contradiction to the karmic dependent appearance that Buddha taught. If one thinks God is a refuge, that also directly contradicts the Refuge precepts of only the Triple Jewel being our refuge. There are other reasons.

So if the bhikshu wants to say it is OK with him, that is fine. It is also fine with me for people to believe in any mish-mash they like, I do not mind. But theism does go against the teachings of the Buddha and to say that it does not, is wrong.

Forgotten the sutta, but Buddha met and talked to Brahma, the Creator God. Brahma admitted, on the quiet, to Buddha, that his followers thought he was the Supreme Being, Creator of All etc., but Brahma knew he was not, as did Buddha.

I totally agree

Never get tired of this quote either:

The affirmation of a ground (Skt. asraya) which is really existent (Skt. paramartha sat) and the denial that such an existent (Skt. satta) can be found anywhere, within or without, immanent or transcendent, are two diametrically opposed paradigms - not simply variations or reformations of each other. ...

The Buddhist paradigm, if understood correctly, does not require an eternal something or other for liberation. In Buddhism liberation is not realizing such a ground but rather a letting go of all grounds i.e. realizing groundless[ness]. In fact holding on to any ground is ignorance, according to Buddhism.

So in the Buddhist paradigm, it is not only not necessary to have an eternal ground for liberation, but in fact the belief in such a ground itself is part of the dynamics of ignorance. We move here to another to major difference within the two paradigms. In Hinduism liberation occurs when this illusory Samsara is completely relinquished and it vanishes; what remains is the eternal Brahma, which is the same as liberation. Since the thesis is that Samsara is merely an illusion, when it vanishes through knowledge, if there were no eternal Brahma remaining, it would be a disaster. So in the Hindu paradigm (or according to Buddhism all paradigms based on ignorance), an eternal unchanging, independent, really existing substratum (Skt. mahavastu) is a necessity for liberation, else one would fall into nihilism. But since the Buddhist paradigm is totally different, the question posed by Hindu scholars: “How can there be liberation if a Brahma does not remain after the illusory Samsara vanishes in Gyana?” is a non question with no relevance in the Buddhist paradigm and its Enlightenment or Nirvana.

First of all, to the Buddha and Nagarjuna, Samsara is not an illusion but like an illusion. There is a quantum leap in the meaning of these two statements. Secondly, because it is only ‘like an illusion’ i.e. interdependently arisen like all illusions, it does not and cannot vanish, so Nirvana is not when Samsara vanishes like mist and the Brahma arises like the sun out of the mist but rather when seeing that the true nature of Samsara is itself Nirvana. So whereas Brahma and Samsara are two different entities, one real and the other unreal, one existing and the other non-existing, Samsara and Nirvana in Buddhism are one and not two. Nirvana is the nature of Samsara or in Nagarjuna’s words shunyata is the nature of Samsara. It is the realization of the nature of Samsara as empty which cuts at the very root of ignorance and results in knowledge not of another thing beyond Samsara but of the way Samsara itself actually exists. It is this knowledge that liberates from wrong conceptual experience of Samsara to the unconditioned experience of Samsara itself. That is what is meant by the indivisibility of Samsara and Nirvana (Skt. Samsara nirvana abhinnata, Tib: Khor de yer me). ...

The Hindu paradigm is world denying, affirming the Brahma. The Buddhist paradigm does not deny the world; it only rectifies our wrong vision (Skt. mithya drsti) of the world. It does not give a dream beyond or separate transcendence from Samsara. Because such a dream is part of the dynamics of ignorance, to present such a dream would be only to perpetuate ignorance.

To Buddhism, any system or paradigm which propagates such an unproven and improvable dream as an eternal substance or ultimate reality, be it Hinduism or any other ‘ism’, is propagating spiritual materialism and not true spirituality. To Hinduism such a Brahma is the summum bonum of its search goal, the peak of the Hindu thesis. The Hindu paradigm would collapse without it. Since Buddhism denies this, it cannot be said honestly that the Buddha merely meant to reform Hinduism. As I have said, it is a totally different paradigm. Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Jainism are all variations of the same paradigm. So truly speaking, you could speak of them as reformations of each other. But Buddhism has a totally different paradigm from any of these, not merely from Vedic-Hinduism.

Mahayogi Shridhar S.J.B. Rana Rinpoche

Will wrote:

It really doesn't go against the teachings of the Buddha, his focus was on suffering...

But it does.

If one thinks a super Being created ourselves and/or the universe, that is a direct contradiction to the karmic dependent appearance that Buddha taught. If one thinks God is a refuge, that also directly contradicts the Refuge precepts of only the Triple Jewel being our refuge. There are other reasons.

So if the bhikshu wants to say it is OK with him, that is fine. It is also fine with me for people to believe in any mish-mash they like, I do not mind. But theism does go against the teachings of the Buddha and to say that it does not, is wrong.

Forgotten the sutta, but Buddha met and talked to Brahma, the Creator God. Brahma admitted, on the quiet, to Buddha, that his followers thought he was the Supreme Being, Creator of All etc., but Brahma knew he was not, as did Buddha.

Doesn't your last paragraph contradict what you say before it? If the Buddha talked to Brahma, then there is a God.

I personally think that there is a God of this world like there is a king of a kingdom. He is a being like you and I who developed enough merit that he ascended to that post. When his merit runs out, so does this world. Someone else will take the job and he will be reborn as a human so that he can continue his own cultivation.

The point of difference in Buddhism is that practicing is not about accruing merit for the sake of attaining positions in the hierarchy of realms. It is about transcending those realms. You can find that in Hinduism (Advaita Vedanta) or even in Judeo-Christian mysticism. The difference between those paths and Buddhism is the concept of no-self and emptiness. There is no soul merging with the Absolute.

So I think that Buddhists believe of God, but not in God. And probably, whether you believe God exists or not and what you think he or she or it is has something to do with a karmic relationship to that being.

No, because Brahmā admitted to Buddha that he was not the Supreme Being, nor the Creator of All.

Brahmā is a deva of one particular type - that is all.

Even if a one god created us and we are here because of him or her why would we worship him or her for landing us in this s*****
god just isnt important they are just beings enjoying better karmic fruit at the moment, they will fall eventually.

peace

xxx

edited for language; sherab zangpo

I believe that "god" is found within each of us. I believe that is the "secret" that the Buddha found through enlightenment and, if you explore the inner or esoteric foundations of all religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam, that is the great secret.

I have explored many paths in my life, including Western mysticism, Sufiism, Kabbala, Rosicrucianism, etc. Even in Buddhism, most Buddhist, say in Japan and China, don't really meditate or practice "inner" Buddhism, they just go through the motions like most Americans just go through the motions of Christiantiy or most Jews just go through the motions of Judaism.

If we really follow the teachings of the Buddha and really learn to meditate and strive for enlightenment, I believe that this is what we find: GOD is inside each and every one of us.

As for a creator being...I think it is a process. If you study, for example, the Kabbala (not the nonsense Madonna believes in, but the REAL Kabbala) you see it spelled out in allegory.

The beauty of Buddhism, to me, is that it gives us tools to discover the truth for ourselves and not just take everything on faith.

Any "being" who demands that we worship him/her, be it "God" or "Satan" is probably not a being you want to be worshipping!

Just my "new bee" view of things...

:namaste:



BodhiSeeker

BodhiSeeker wrote:
I believe that "god" is found within each of us. I believe that is the "secret" that the Buddha found through enlightenment and, if you explore the inner or esoteric foundations of all religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam, that is the great secret.

Yet Buddha did not teach that God is found within us.

Karma Dondrup Tashi wrote:

BodhiSeeker wrote:
I believe that "god" is found within each of us. I believe that is the "secret" that the Buddha found through enlightenment and, if you explore the inner or esoteric foundations of all religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam, that is the great secret.

Yet Buddha did not teach that God is found within us.

Depends upon how you define god though doesnt it.....change the word god for buddha.

" Buddha is found within us "

All beings have buddha nature......many people call the ultimate different things.

peace

xxx

caz namyaw wrote:

Karma Dondrup Tashi wrote:

BodhiSeeker wrote:
I believe that "god" is found within each of us. I believe that is the "secret" that the Buddha found through enlightenment and, if you explore the inner or esoteric foundations of all religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam, that is the great secret.

Yet Buddha did not teach that God is found within us.

Depends upon how you define god though doesnt it.....change the word god for buddha.

" Buddha is found within us "

All beings have buddha nature......many people call the ultimate different things.

peace

xxx

But why would you change the word god for Buddha? You don't change a word to make a statement become true. If it is a false concept, it is false. God, most especially in the Abrahamic religions, is not only a singular being that supposedly knows and effects all, but requires absolute devotion. God, and Buddha, are not even close to interchangeable.

Too often people, mostly in America, try to make Buddhism more palatable in its concepts for the Christians. Many do not even purposefully do this, but it happens none the less. The best thing 1 can do to start cultivating and getting in touch with their Buddha-nature, is to get rid of the shackles that our preconceived ideas of religion and spirituality are.

Antigen wrote:
But why would you change the word god for Buddha? You don't change a word to make a statement become true. If it is a false concept, it is false. God, most especially in the Abrahamic religions, is not only a singular being that supposedly knows and effects all, but requires absolute devotion. God, and Buddha, are not even close to interchangeable.

Too often people, mostly in America, try to make Buddhism more palatable in its concepts for the Christians. Many do not even purposefully do this, but it happens none the less. The best thing 1 can do to start cultivating and getting in touch with their Buddha-nature, is to get rid of the shackles that our preconceived ideas of religion and spirituality are.

:namaste:

Antigen wrote:

caz namyaw wrote:

Karma Dondrup Tashi wrote:

BodhiSeeker wrote:
I believe that "god" is found within each of us. I believe that is the "secret" that the Buddha found through enlightenment and, if you explore the inner or esoteric foundations of all religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam, that is the great secret.

Yet Buddha did not teach that God is found within us.

Depends upon how you define god though doesnt it.....change the word god for buddha.

" Buddha is found within us "

All beings have buddha nature......many people call the ultimate different things.

peace

xxx

But why would you change the word god for Buddha? You don't change a word to make a statement become true. If it is a false concept, it is false. God, most especially in the Abrahamic religions, is not only a singular being that supposedly knows and effects all, but requires absolute devotion. God, and Buddha, are not even close to interchangeable.

Too often people, mostly in America, try to make Buddhism more palatable in its concepts for the Christians. Many do not even purposefully do this, but it happens none the less. The best thing 1 can do to start cultivating and getting in touch with their Buddha-nature, is to get rid of the shackles that our preconceived ideas of religion and spirituality are.

Why because there are many similarites, god is within you, buddha nature is within you at the end of the day when people refer to the ultimate they can use an endless varities of expression, buddhas often manifest in many different forms in order to meet the capacity of sentient beings....sure there are differences but we are not all the same, for all we know buddha could be manifesting as a god.....but it doesnt matter weather this being is or not all beings have buddha nature, it all depends on how people place such definitions, there is no one definition....they arent inherantly existant

peace

xxx

Does God believe in Buddhists?

thecap wrote:Does God believe in Buddhists?

I hope so

Im my opinion the question "is there a god" is foolish to ask

You will never get an answer and in the mean time you are afflicted with Dukkha

Its best, in my view, to take a view of the question being unimportant since the whole matter is highly speculative, and any answer arrived at will be based on some ignoranct though or view

However i would say it is more hurtful to buddhist practice to fully believe in an all powerful, all knowing God of some kind than to not believe in one

Metta