Interfaith Dialogue

[LastLegend]

Very good, Serenity. Such a beautiful name.

[Serenity509]

Very good, Serenity. Such a beautiful name.

I don't know what you're trying to imply, but I'm a married man.

[LastLegend]

Sorry I thought Serenity is a female's name. Lol. Anyway good luck with your journey.

[Serenity509]

Sorry I thought Serenity is a female's name. Lol. Anyway good luck with your journey.

It's not a name, it's a state of mind.

[LastLegend]

Sorry I thought Serenity is a female's name. Lol. Anyway good luck with your journey.

It's not a name, it's a state of mind.

You are right. But if I have a second daughter, I will name her Serenity.

[Serenity509]

Has anyone heard of the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ? This is an interesting commentary on it:

Introducing the Aquarian Gospel
http://www.atmajyoti.org/ch_aquarian_commentary_01.asp

It presents Jesus as favorable to the Buddha and Eastern spirituality. This is an excerpt:

After speaking on the subject of universal evolution in the Buddhist center of Kapivastu (actually: Kapilavastu), “Barata was amazed; the wisdom of the Jewish sage was a revelation unto him. Now, Vidyapati, wisest of the Indian sages, chief of temple Kapivastu, heard Barata speak to Jesus of the origin of man, and heard the answer of the Hebrew prophet, and he said, You priests of Kapivastu, hear me speak: We stand today upon a crest of time. Six times ago a master soul was born who gave a glory light to man, and now a master sage stands here in temple Kapivastu. This Hebrew prophet is the rising star of wisdom, deified. He brings to us a knowledge of the secrets things of God; and all the world will hear his words, will heed his words, and glorify his name. You priests of temple Kapivastu, stay! be still and listen when he speaks; he is the Living Oracle of God. And all the priests gave thanks, and praised the Buddha of enlightenment.” (Aquarian Gospel 32:40-45)

Vidyapati says that they stand at the threshold of a new spiritual era. By Buddhist reckoning Sri Gautama Buddha had been born six “ages” before–five hundred years by our reckoning. The Buddha had told his disciples that after five hundred years the Dharma would have vanished from the earth in its fulness, but that it would be restored by the next Buddha. This is the Buddha known in Buddhism as Maitreya Buddha. It is popularly supposed that Maitreya Buddha is yet to come, but according to Vidyapati Jesus himself was Maitreya Buddha. Certainly his prophecy about Jesus as a world teacher was fulfilled. And those who heard him “praised the Buddha of enlightenment.” And so should we.
http://www.atmajyoti.org/ch_aquarian_co ... y_misc.asp

It's worth noting that the Dalai Lama regards Jesus as a bodhisattva.

[Serenity509]

This is interesting...

THE TEACHINGS OF SOYEN SHAKU

THE GOD-CONCEPTION OF BUDDHISM 1

AMONG the many critical opinions which are passed upon Buddhism by Christian or Western scholars, there are two which stand out most conspicuously and most persistently. One of them declares that Buddhism is a religion which denies the existence of the soul, and the other that it is atheistic or at best pantheistic, which latter term implies what is practically tantamount to the rejection of a God, that is, a personal God as believed in by the Christians. The object of this discourse is to see to what extent the second criticism is, if at all, justifiable. In other words, I propose here to elucidate the Buddhist conception of God.

At the outset, let me state that Buddhism is not atheistic as the term is ordinarily understood. It has certainly a God, the highest reality and truth, through which and in which this universe exists. However, the followers of Buddhism usually avoid the term God, for it savors so much of Christianity, whose spirit is not always exactly in accord with the Buddhist interpretation of religious experience. Again, Buddhism is not pantheistic in the sense that it identifies the universe with God. On the other hand, the Buddhist God is absolute and transcendent; this world, being merely its manifestation, is necessarily fragmental and imperfect. To define more exactly the Buddhist notion of the highest being, it may be convenient to borrow the term very happily coined by a modern German scholar, "panentheism," according to which God is πᾶν καὶ ἕν (all and one) and more than the totality of existence...

We must not, however, suppose that God is no more than the sum-total of individual existences. God exists even when all creations have been destroyed and reduced to a state of chaotic barrenness. God exists eternally, and he will create another universe out of the ruins of this one. To our limited intelligence there may be a beginning and an end of the worlds, but as God surveys them, being and becoming are one selfsame process. To him nothing changes, or, to state it rather paradoxically, he sees no change whatever in all the changes we have around us; all things are absolutely quiet in their eternal cycle of birth and death, growth and decay, combination and disintegration. This universe cannot exist outside of God, but God is more than the totality of individual existences; God is here as well as there, God is not only this but also that. As far as he is manifested in nature and mind, they glorify him, and we can have a glimpse of his image and feel, however imperfectly, his inner life. But it will be a grievous error, let us repeat, to think that he has exhausted his being in the manifestation of this universe, that he is absolutely identical with his creations, and that with the annihilation of the world he vanishes into eternal emptiness...

When the Dharmakâya is most concretely conceived it becomes the Buddha, or Tathâgata, or Vairochana, or Amitâbha. Buddha means "the enlightened," and this may be understood to correspond to "God is wisdom." Vairochana is "coming from the sun," and Amitâbha, "infinite light," which reminds us of the Christian notion, "God is light..."

Lastly, Paramârtha and Satya are the terms used to designate the epistemological phase of the Dharmakâya. Paramârtha is the first or highest reason, and Satya is truth or that which truly is. And for the psychological aspect of the Dharmakâya, or as it is manifested in the human consciousness, we have Bodhi or Hridaya. Bodhi is the divine wisdom incarnated in our limited intelligence, or the divine love as reflected in our human sympathy and compassion. Hridaya is the inner life of existence which prompts and quickens us to do the will of the Dharmakâya, and which is awakened to its full dignity and glory when intelligence passes over the limits of relativity. The reason why we are able to have an insight into the nature of the ultimate being and to recognize the truth that sameness and difference are co-existent and really identical, is because our Bodhi or Hridaya is essentially one with the Dharmakâya. When the Bodhi comes to know itself, it also knows the inner being of Dharmakâya, however fragmentary the knowledge be, and we lie blissfully at rest in the bosom of eternal motherliness.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/zfa/zfa04.htm

[catmoon]

I'd like to point out that there are quite a few of us who think there is no God in Buddhism, that Buddha is not God and that even prayer to Buddha is quite problematical.

[Serenity509]

I'd like to point out that there are quite a few of us who think there is no God in Buddhism, that Buddha is not God and that even prayer to Buddha is quite problematical.

What do you think of this video's idea of God?

Pandeism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQRCsbO_rk4

I think that many people are opposed to the idea of God because of the image that's been given them from Abrahamic faiths, not because of personal experience.

[Astus]

What do you think of this video's idea of God?

Pandeism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQRCsbO_rk4

I think that many people are opposed to the idea of God because of the image that's been given them from Abrahamic faiths, not because of personal experience.

Buddhism first spread in India. When the Buddha and later Indian teachers talk about rejecting the existence of an Absolute God they refer to Hindu gods primarily. Christian and Muslim contact with Buddhism happened later.

[Serenity509]

What do you think of this video's idea of God?

Pandeism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQRCsbO_rk4

I think that many people are opposed to the idea of God because of the image that's been given them from Abrahamic faiths, not because of personal experience.

Buddhism first spread in India. When the Buddha and later Indian teachers talk about rejecting the existence of an Absolute God they refer to Hindu gods primarily. Christian and Muslim contact with Buddhism happened later.

Is this a form of belief in God?

In Vajrayana Buddhism, the Adi-Buddha, or Adibuddha (Tibetan: Dang-po'i sangs-rgyas), is the "Primordial Buddha." The term refers to a self-emanating, self-originating Buddha, present before anything else existed. Samantabhadra/Samantabhadri and Vajradhara are the best known names for Adi-Buddha, though there are others. Adi-Buddha is usually depicted as dark blue.

The concept of Adi-Buddha is the closest to monotheism any form of Buddhism comes. Even then, Adi-Buddha is recognized as the center of an extended array of Peaceful and Wrathful Deities, which are considered reflections of it. All famous sages and Bodhisattvas are said to be reflections of Adi-Buddha, and many are identified as the "personality" of it.

Adi-Buddha is better compared to the abstracted forces of Brahman, Ayn Sof or Arche rather than a personal creator God in the mold of Yahweh or Ishvara. Also, Adi-Buddha is not said to be the creator, but the originator of all things. Adi-Buddha is a deity in an Emanationist sense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi-Buddha

In Shin Buddhism, Amida Buddha is viewed as the eternal Buddha who manifested as Shakyamuni in India and who is the personification of Nirvana itself. The Shin Buddhist priest, John Paraskevopoulos, in his monograph on Shin Buddhism, writes:

'In Shin Buddhism, Nirvana or Ultimate Reality (also known as the "Dharma-Body" or Dharmakaya in the original Sanskrit) has assumed a more concrete form as (a) the Buddha of Infinite Light (Amitabha) and Infinite Life (Amitayus)and (b) the "Pure Land" or "Land of Utmost Bliss" (Sukhavati), the realm over which this Buddha is said to preside ... Amida is the Eternal Buddha who is said to have taken form as Shakyamuni and his teachings in order to become known to us in ways we can readily comprehend.'[49]

John Paraskevopoulos elucidates the notion of Nirvana, of which Amida is an embodiment, in the following terms:

... [Nirvana's] more positive connotation is that of a higher state of being, the dispelling of illusion and the corresponding joy of liberation. An early Buddhist scripture describes Nirvana as: ... the far shore, the subtle, the very difficult to see, the undisintegrating, the unmanifest, the peaceful, the deathless, the sublime, the auspicious, the secure, the destruction of craving, the wonderful, the amazing, the unailing, the unafflicted, dispassion, purity, freedom, the island, the shelter, the asylum, the refuge ... (Samyutta Nikaya)[50]
This Nirvana is seen as eternal and of one nature, indeed as the essence of all things. Paraskevopoulos tells of how the Mahaparinirvana Sutra speaks of Nirvana as eternal, pure, blissful and true self:

In Mahayana Buddhism it is taught that there is fundamentally one reality which, in its highest and purest dimension, is experienced as Nirvana. It is also known, as we have seen, as the Dharma-Body (considered as the ultimate form of Being) or "Suchness" (Tathata in Sanskrit) when viewed as the essence of all things ... "The Dharma-Body is eternity, bliss, true self and purity. It is forever free of all birth, ageing, sickness and death" (Nirvana Sutra)[51]
To attain this Self, however, it is needful to transcend the 'small self' and its pettiness with the help of an 'external' agency, Amida Buddha. This is the view promulgated by the Jodo Shinshu founding Buddhist master, Shinran Shonin. John Paraskevopoulos comments on this:

Shinran's great insight was that we cannot conquer the self by the self. Some kind of external agency is required: (a) to help us to shed light on our ego as it really is in all its petty and baneful guises; and (b) to enable us to subdue the small 'self' with a view to realising the Great Self by awakening to Amida's light.[52]
When that Great Self of Amida's light is realised, Shin Buddhism is able to see the Infinite which transcends the care-worn mundane. John Paraskevopoulos concludes his monograph on Shin Buddhism thus:

It is time we discarded the tired view of Buddhism as a dry and forensic rationalism , lacking in warmth and devotion ... By hearing the call of Amida Buddha we become awakened to true reality and its unfathomable working ... to live a life that dances jubilantly in the resplendent light of the Infinite.[53]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Bud ... n_Buddhism

[PadmaVonSamba]

I think that many people are opposed to the idea of God because of the image that's been given them from Abrahamic faiths, not because of personal experience.

You have hit the nail on the head (a phrase, I think which comes from the crucifixion) and this can be understood by reading the Diamond Sutra, which explains that we mistake the names for things as being the reality of things.

So often we start out with a word, such as "god" or "religion", which are abstract concepts, and then we try to fill in the definition of those terms with whatever stuff is available. So, for example, someone might look at the fact that catholic monks and buddhist monks take vows, wear robes and burn incense in front of a big table with junk piled on top of it, and then say, "see...that's religion!" even though these are outward similarities, and it would be the same as calling a whale a fish, or a bat a bird.

So, we grow up with one definition of "god" and then say, 'is this a god? is that a religion?" and so forth. It's a very backwards approach.

Once you start tearing it all apart, you find that Belief in a god and belief in no god end up being the same thing, because they are both explanations of our experience, and for each person that experience is different. We use these generalized labels but we don't really believe in the labels. We believe in what we experience.

One of my favorite sayings is, "if there were no god, then dog spelled backwards would be meaningless"

[gregkavarnos]

Dear Serenity,

It seems to me that you are spending a lot of time trying to project uopn Buddhism what you need, rather than looking at what Buddhism actually is.

If you search long and hard enough you will find a form of Buddhism that fits your conception and thus satisfies your need. But then the purpose of Buddhism is defeated. And what is that purpose? To provide you with tools that will allow you to go beyond your concepts, beyond your personal ego-centred desires, to directly experience truth.

Find a form of Buddhism that "spins your dials", go for it and see where it takes you (or doesn't take you). But you gotta stop trying to make Buddhism conform to your view. Why? Coz then it isn't really Buddhism, it is just your (deluded) view (again).

[Malcolm]

My belief in God is similar to Hinduism. It could also be termed panentheism. I believe that God is the oversoul of the universe. I believe that God, while ultimately transpersonal, can be related to on a personal level. I believe that there is a piece of God within us all and the purpose of Enlightenment is to become one with God.

Buddhism is not for you. You are a Hindu by disposition.

Try out non-dual Shaivism. It will be more to your taste.

Buddhism will constantly disappoint you.

For we Buddhists, there is no oversoul, undersoul or middle soul. There is no soul at all.

N

[Enochian]

Nondual Shaivism


http://alexissanderson.com/Documents/sa ... ottara.pdf

[adinatha]

Buddha is not God. Buddha is your mind.

[adinatha]

I believe that there is a piece of God within us all and the purpose of Enlightenment is to become one with God.

Poor God. He's all cut up into pieces. LOL. Well you are certainly not the first to think what you think. That's what 1 bil Hindus say too. But you have to understand Buddhism is very different. "Jesus was a bodhisattva..." The Dalai Lama is a political figure who has to pay lip service to other traditions. But it's not true. A bodhisattva is someone with a profound realization of emptiness. Jesus worshipped God. But in some loose sense, everyone is a bodhisattva, because, by virtue of the force of many reincarnations, as probabilities go, everyone will eventually land on the path of the buddhas.

[Paul]

So, we grow up with one definition of "god" and then say, 'is this a god? is that a religion?" and so forth. It's a very backwards approach.

I agree. Many people's view of religion is little more than a simple view of Christianity - especially when they are tryiong to criticise the religious, when it's then narrowed to Catholicism and some American Baptists. But what about Taoist sages or Amazonian shamans? They make such narrow concepts useless.

One of my favorite sayings is, "if there were no god, then dog spelled backwards would be meaningless"

[Serenity509]

It seems to me that you are spending a lot of time trying to project uopn Buddhism what you need, rather than looking at what Buddhism actually is.

That is actually not true. I am looking at concepts like this and trying to make sense of them...

THE TEACHINGS OF SOYEN SHAKU

THE GOD-CONCEPTION OF BUDDHISM 1

AMONG the many critical opinions which are passed upon Buddhism by Christian or Western scholars, there are two which stand out most conspicuously and most persistently. One of them declares that Buddhism is a religion which denies the existence of the soul, and the other that it is atheistic or at best pantheistic, which latter term implies what is practically tantamount to the rejection of a God, that is, a personal God as believed in by the Christians. The object of this discourse is to see to what extent the second criticism is, if at all, justifiable. In other words, I propose here to elucidate the Buddhist conception of God.

At the outset, let me state that Buddhism is not atheistic as the term is ordinarily understood. It has certainly a God, the highest reality and truth, through which and in which this universe exists. However, the followers of Buddhism usually avoid the term God, for it savors so much of Christianity, whose spirit is not always exactly in accord with the Buddhist interpretation of religious experience. Again, Buddhism is not pantheistic in the sense that it identifies the universe with God. On the other hand, the Buddhist God is absolute and transcendent; this world, being merely its manifestation, is necessarily fragmental and imperfect. To define more exactly the Buddhist notion of the highest being, it may be convenient to borrow the term very happily coined by a modern German scholar, "panentheism," according to which God is πᾶν καὶ ἕν (all and one) and more than the totality of existence...

We must not, however, suppose that God is no more than the sum-total of individual existences. God exists even when all creations have been destroyed and reduced to a state of chaotic barrenness. God exists eternally, and he will create another universe out of the ruins of this one. To our limited intelligence there may be a beginning and an end of the worlds, but as God surveys them, being and becoming are one selfsame process. To him nothing changes, or, to state it rather paradoxically, he sees no change whatever in all the changes we have around us; all things are absolutely quiet in their eternal cycle of birth and death, growth and decay, combination and disintegration. This universe cannot exist outside of God, but God is more than the totality of individual existences; God is here as well as there, God is not only this but also that. As far as he is manifested in nature and mind, they glorify him, and we can have a glimpse of his image and feel, however imperfectly, his inner life. But it will be a grievous error, let us repeat, to think that he has exhausted his being in the manifestation of this universe, that he is absolutely identical with his creations, and that with the annihilation of the world he vanishes into eternal emptiness...

When the Dharmakâya is most concretely conceived it becomes the Buddha, or Tathâgata, or Vairochana, or Amitâbha. Buddha means "the enlightened," and this may be understood to correspond to "God is wisdom." Vairochana is "coming from the sun," and Amitâbha, "infinite light," which reminds us of the Christian notion, "God is light..."

Lastly, Paramârtha and Satya are the terms used to designate the epistemological phase of the Dharmakâya. Paramârtha is the first or highest reason, and Satya is truth or that which truly is. And for the psychological aspect of the Dharmakâya, or as it is manifested in the human consciousness, we have Bodhi or Hridaya. Bodhi is the divine wisdom incarnated in our limited intelligence, or the divine love as reflected in our human sympathy and compassion. Hridaya is the inner life of existence which prompts and quickens us to do the will of the Dharmakâya, and which is awakened to its full dignity and glory when intelligence passes over the limits of relativity. The reason why we are able to have an insight into the nature of the ultimate being and to recognize the truth that sameness and difference are co-existent and really identical, is because our Bodhi or Hridaya is essentially one with the Dharmakâya. When the Bodhi comes to know itself, it also knows the inner being of Dharmakâya, however fragmentary the knowledge be, and we lie blissfully at rest in the bosom of eternal motherliness.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/zfa/zfa04.htm

In Vajrayana Buddhism, the Adi-Buddha, or Adibuddha (Tibetan: Dang-po'i sangs-rgyas), is the "Primordial Buddha." The term refers to a self-emanating, self-originating Buddha, present before anything else existed. Samantabhadra/Samantabhadri and Vajradhara are the best known names for Adi-Buddha, though there are others. Adi-Buddha is usually depicted as dark blue.

The concept of Adi-Buddha is the closest to monotheism any form of Buddhism comes. Even then, Adi-Buddha is recognized as the center of an extended array of Peaceful and Wrathful Deities, which are considered reflections of it. All famous sages and Bodhisattvas are said to be reflections of Adi-Buddha, and many are identified as the "personality" of it.

Adi-Buddha is better compared to the abstracted forces of Brahman, Ayn Sof or Arche rather than a personal creator God in the mold of Yahweh or Ishvara. Also, Adi-Buddha is not said to be the creator, but the originator of all things. Adi-Buddha is a deity in an Emanationist sense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi-Buddha

In Shin Buddhism, Amida Buddha is viewed as the eternal Buddha who manifested as Shakyamuni in India and who is the personification of Nirvana itself. The Shin Buddhist priest, John Paraskevopoulos, in his monograph on Shin Buddhism, writes:

'In Shin Buddhism, Nirvana or Ultimate Reality (also known as the "Dharma-Body" or Dharmakaya in the original Sanskrit) has assumed a more concrete form as (a) the Buddha of Infinite Light (Amitabha) and Infinite Life (Amitayus)and (b) the "Pure Land" or "Land of Utmost Bliss" (Sukhavati), the realm over which this Buddha is said to preside ... Amida is the Eternal Buddha who is said to have taken form as Shakyamuni and his teachings in order to become known to us in ways we can readily comprehend.'[49]

John Paraskevopoulos elucidates the notion of Nirvana, of which Amida is an embodiment, in the following terms:

... [Nirvana's] more positive connotation is that of a higher state of being, the dispelling of illusion and the corresponding joy of liberation. An early Buddhist scripture describes Nirvana as: ... the far shore, the subtle, the very difficult to see, the undisintegrating, the unmanifest, the peaceful, the deathless, the sublime, the auspicious, the secure, the destruction of craving, the wonderful, the amazing, the unailing, the unafflicted, dispassion, purity, freedom, the island, the shelter, the asylum, the refuge ... (Samyutta Nikaya)[50]
This Nirvana is seen as eternal and of one nature, indeed as the essence of all things. Paraskevopoulos tells of how the Mahaparinirvana Sutra speaks of Nirvana as eternal, pure, blissful and true self:

In Mahayana Buddhism it is taught that there is fundamentally one reality which, in its highest and purest dimension, is experienced as Nirvana. It is also known, as we have seen, as the Dharma-Body (considered as the ultimate form of Being) or "Suchness" (Tathata in Sanskrit) when viewed as the essence of all things ... "The Dharma-Body is eternity, bliss, true self and purity. It is forever free of all birth, ageing, sickness and death" (Nirvana Sutra)[51]
To attain this Self, however, it is needful to transcend the 'small self' and its pettiness with the help of an 'external' agency, Amida Buddha. This is the view promulgated by the Jodo Shinshu founding Buddhist master, Shinran Shonin. John Paraskevopoulos comments on this:

Shinran's great insight was that we cannot conquer the self by the self. Some kind of external agency is required: (a) to help us to shed light on our ego as it really is in all its petty and baneful guises; and (b) to enable us to subdue the small 'self' with a view to realising the Great Self by awakening to Amida's light.[52]
When that Great Self of Amida's light is realised, Shin Buddhism is able to see the Infinite which transcends the care-worn mundane. John Paraskevopoulos concludes his monograph on Shin Buddhism thus:

It is time we discarded the tired view of Buddhism as a dry and forensic rationalism , lacking in warmth and devotion ... By hearing the call of Amida Buddha we become awakened to true reality and its unfathomable working ... to live a life that dances jubilantly in the resplendent light of the Infinite.[53]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Bud ... n_Buddhism

[Serenity509]

I believe that there is a piece of God within us all and the purpose of Enlightenment is to become one with God.

Poor God. He's all cut up into pieces. LOL. Well you are certainly not the first to think what you think. That's what 1 bil Hindus say too. But you have to understand Buddhism is very different.

Was Buddha a Buddhist? Whether one describes the ultimate reality that the devotee becomes one with as Brahman or Nirvana seems to be a matter of semantics and personal preference.