Showing posts with label "GOD" AND BUDDHISM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label "GOD" AND BUDDHISM. Show all posts
Saturday, February 11, 2017
On the powerful pretas (hungry spirits) who wish to dominate other beings through religion
“Those who take refuge truly and wholeheartedly, freeing themselves
from all delusional attachments and all concern with the propitious or
unpropitious, must never take refuge in spirits or non-Buddhist teachings.”[1]
Unenlightened beings are the karmic cause for the existence of unenlightened samsaric realms. Their individual and collective karma
actually manifested the realms, worlds and universes in which they live. Contrary
to this, Enlightened beings or Buddhas, naturaly and karmically manifest Pure Lands or Enlightened realms. If a so called "supreme being" created a
world like ours that means he is not enlightened, because if he was enlightened
this world would have been perfect and inhabitted by perfectly enlightened
beings. Amida Buddha (and any Buddha!) does not pretend to be the creator of
this samsaric world, but only of His enlightened Pure Land, where He vowed to
bring all samsaric beings for their final liberation (attainment of
Buddhahood/Nirvana).
Categories:
"GOD" AND BUDDHISM,
BUDDHIST COSMOLOGY
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Monday, April 27, 2015
Belief in a creator god is an obstacle to shinjin
Please, read carefully the other articles in this category:
Question[1]:
“A lot of folks who end up in Shin
Buddhism here in the West have a lot of vestigial concepts from our Abrahamic
background - whether or not they were ever "believers" [in God] themselves. And they carry those vestigial ideas with them when they
start in as Buddhists. Some don't do that of course - particularly the ones who
are given to serious study, and really consider it important to know what
Shakyamuni actually taught. But as you know from your time in both the
Zen and Shin Sanghas, such study is often not the primary focus - or even as
great a focus as it is in the Theravada and Tibetan Buddhist Sangha groups. […]
So, in your opinion, based on your own reading and
contemplating, is it possible for an ignorant, yet well meaning person to come
to settled shinjin (faith) if he or she has never actually studied the subject[2],
and has some mixed up ideas about eternalism stuck in his mind stream? Or is
the presence of such thoughts a necessary karmic obstacle that must directly be
addressed and removed before the person can receive Amida's gift of shinjin?”
Categories:
"GOD" AND BUDDHISM,
DIVERGENCES FROM THE JODO SHINSHU TEACHING,
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
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Friday, March 13, 2015
Two questions on Buddha nature and Samsara
I received a few questions from my readers in relation to my
last articles, “Some Buddhist explanations on the origin and existence of the universe” and “There is no supreme creator god in the Buddha Dharma”. Here are
two of them (reformulated) and my short answer:
Question 1: “Where
the Buddha nature within us originally came from?”
Question 2: “When
the process of self-delusion or suffering started in the first place and why?”
Categories:
"GOD" AND BUDDHISM,
BUDDHIST COSMOLOGY
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Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Some Buddhist explanations on the origin and existence of the universe
Regard this phantom world
As a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud
A flickering lamp — a phantom — and a dream.
As a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud
A flickering lamp — a phantom — and a dream.
Shakyamuni Buddha
( read my previous article in the same category, “There is no supreme creator god in the Buddha Dharma”)
If Buddhism denies the idea of a
creator-god, then how it explains the existence of the various worlds and
universes?
First of all, when it refers to
worlds and universes, the Buddha Dharma explaines them as places of rebirth, or
Samsaric realms. Thus, they are inhabited by unenlightened beings in various stages of
spiritual evolution or involution. As far as I know, most of the monotheists
give the following argument in
the support of their belief in a supreme creator-god: “if you see a house in a
field you ask yourself who built it. In the same way, this complex world is the
creation of our god. Anything that exists has a creator”. This is the basis of
their belief system, but for Buddhists the matter is wrongly addressed here.
Yes, indeed, everything has a creator, but not in the way the monotheists think.
I would rather say, every dream has a
creator – the dreamer. And who is the dreamer? It is us – the unenlightened
beings with our specific individual karma, but also with the collective karma
or the karmic connections we create among us.
Categories:
"GOD" AND BUDDHISM,
BUDDHIST COSMOLOGY,
KARMA
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Monday, February 9, 2015
There is no supreme creator-god in the Buddha Dharma
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Buddha (right) preaching the Truth to Baka Brahma (left) who had the illusion that he is supreme in the world |
Well, this is a
great delusion and a falsification of Shakyamuni’s teaching. In fact, the
Buddha clearly denied the existence of a supreme being who created the world,
rules the world and will one day judge the world. In this short article and
others that will soon follow, I do not have the intention to enter into any
debate or polemics with followers of other religions on the existence or
non-existence of such a supreme being, but just to prove that Shakyamuni Buddha
clearly denied this view and considered it a false and dangerous illusion. For
me the most important thing is not what monotheistic religions say, or if some chose
to believe in a creator god (its their choice), but what the Buddha actually said
and preached. So, if we consider ourselves to be His diciples, we ought to know
His position on this topic and follow it faithfully.
It is well known
that among the many religious and philosophical traditions that were contemporary
with the Buddha, the idea of a supreme being who created and sustains the world
was well known and shared by many. This is exactly why, He did not kept
silence, but preached against it.
Categories:
"GOD" AND BUDDHISM,
BUDDHIST COSMOLOGY
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