Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

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wonderingaround
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Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by wonderingaround »

Hi,
I recently encountered an online conversation whether buddhists must accept deities, the other realms etc. as fact and believe in them. I have been studying Buddhism for some time on and off and have never come across this sort of a statement. None the literature I've read (basic books by Dalai Lama, TNH, Jack Kornfield, articles on Tricycle etc.) have discussed these matters except when repeating anecdotes from Buddha's past lives to clear a point on some teaching. So everything I have encountered has taken the supernatural aspects of scripture as symbolic (eg. deities are seen as archetypes or representations of our buddha nature).
I have considered myself as a Buddhist for some time and frankly, got slightly upset that my view that I have assumed is very mainstream especially in the West is considered an insult to "real buddhists".

I would really appreciate any views on this and also how to respond if I encounter this sort of claims again.
Many thanks in advance!
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Re: Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by Malcolm »

wonderingaround wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 6:09 pm Hi,
I recently encountered an online conversation whether buddhists must accept deities, the other realms etc. as fact and believe in them.
This rather fundamentalist idea mainly circulates in some Nyingmapa circles.
I have considered myself as a Buddhist for some time and frankly, got slightly upset that my view that I have assumed is very mainstream especially in the West is considered an insult to "real buddhists".
There are fanatics everywhere.
I would really appreciate any views on this and also how to respond if I encounter this sort of claims again.
Many thanks in advance!
Treat it the same way you would treat any fundamentalist claim.
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Re: Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by Hazel »

Welcome to the forum!

If you're looking for comfort, some of the responses here may be as upsetting as others you've gotten. There's always going to be someone telling you that what you believe is not "correct" , regardless of what you believe! If a person relies on some amorphous measure of "correctness" as a means of comfort and security, they are setting themselves up for pain and disillusionment. It's a very dangerous trap to fall into . And also very easy to fall into (I'm guilty of that) when we've been conditioned to believe the world and the truths in it are black/white.

My advice is to keep doing what you're doing. Read, practice, and check in about whether you are subduing your mind, acting virtuously, and not harming others. Adjust accordingly.
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Re: Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by Johnny Dangerous »

Approach it from where ever you are, keep an open mind, examine your own biases. I think that's enough. More abstract arguments like "is this really Buddhism" can be really useful at times, but at other times we are not really read for them and they just add to our confusion.

So, just do your best and try to worry less about what other people think, that's my two cents.

It's tough to do on the internet, but there is something to be said for only engaging in debates that will help with your practice, a lot of time can be spent in wrangling that goes nowhere.
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Re: Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by wonderingaround »

Thank you all for your replies!

Like with all internet arguments, I felt like an idiot for engaging in one, but couldn't help myself reading these outrageous claims.
I was so taken aback by someone claiming that a literal interpretation of the scriptures is mainstream and that I must follow some "american Zen way" to think otherwise.

Anyway, I am now trying to view this as a learning opportunity in both wise action as well as empathy towards others.
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Re: Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by Hazel »

wonderingaround wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 8:13 pm Thank you all for your replies!

Like with all internet arguments, I felt like an idiot for engaging in one, but couldn't help myself reading these outrageous claims.
I was so taken aback by someone claiming that a literal interpretation of the scriptures is mainstream and that I must follow some "american Zen way" to think otherwise.

Anyway, I am now trying to view this as a learning opportunity in both wise action as well as empathy towards others.
I am sorry others were unkind in this way. Such statements can really take the wind out of one's sails.

There is similar danger in assuming that their way of looking at it is also not mainstream or correct - I'm not saying you're doing this, but I figured it'd be worth pointing out (and may help with the empathy you mentioned). This is where some of the tension around secular buddhism comes from - people giving each other grief and become defensive (on all sides).
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Re: Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by Malcolm »

wonderingaround wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 8:13 pm Like with all internet arguments, I felt like an idiot for engaging in one, but couldn't help myself reading these outrageous claims.
I was so taken aback by someone claiming that a literal interpretation of the scriptures is mainstream and that I must follow some "american Zen way" to think otherwise.
There are two doctrines, without which Buddhadharma makes no sense: karma and rebirth. These are the two main existential issues Buddhadharma seeks to address. Without these two doctrines, Buddha's solutions to the problem of suffering do not make sense.
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Re: Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by Brunelleschi »

wonderingaround wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 8:13 pm Thank you all for your replies!

Like with all internet arguments, I felt like an idiot for engaging in one, but couldn't help myself reading these outrageous claims.
I was so taken aback by someone claiming that a literal interpretation of the scriptures is mainstream and that I must follow some "american Zen way" to think otherwise.

Anyway, I am now trying to view this as a learning opportunity in both wise action as well as empathy towards others.
I wouldn't call "outrageous" - they're the traditional views. And yes, there are many buddhists, especially minorities in the West that feel your position is more or less a "colonial" view.
Last edited by Brunelleschi on Sun Jan 23, 2022 11:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by Johnny Dangerous »

wonderingaround wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 8:13 pm Thank you all for your replies!

Like with all internet arguments, I felt like an idiot for engaging in one, but couldn't help myself reading these outrageous claims.
I was so taken aback by someone claiming that a literal interpretation of the scriptures is mainstream and that I must follow some "american Zen way" to think otherwise.

Anyway, I am now trying to view this as a learning opportunity in both wise action as well as empathy towards others.
I once asked a close Dharma friend about something like this, essentially a question about orthodoxy and/or fundamentalism. IIRC we were talking not only Buddhism, but also we had touched on range of orthodoxy in the Jewish tradition and were talking about Chabad specifically.

I expected him to back me up and tell me I was right and they were wrong, he is not a very orthodox person or Dharma practitioner. Instead he just said "look Zach, somebody has to be that guy, somebody has to be the orthodox one, it's just not you". It's true, you will always find people in Dharma you agree and disagree with. I've found myself disagreeing both with the orthodox, and with more "secular Buddhism" types. Actually, from my perspective Secular Buddhism is often another form of fundamentalism or orthodoxy.

I've tried to pare it down though, so that now I engage over things I am less sure about and, and would actually like to discuss with people. Things I am comfortable in my own understanding of I don't see any reason to debate, or to defend. YMMV.

Really, ultimately we should not be looking for validation of our practice from those kinds of conversations though, that should come from our teacher and ourselves.

Also, as far as understanding the interpretation of Buddhist scripture:

https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?tit ... ve_meaning

https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?tit ... al_meaning

You should understand there has always been debate around this stuff, and probably always will be. That is ok and healthy, it becomes a problem when we are so attached to our views or so opposed to others that it impairs, rather than helps our practice. The signs of that a pretty obvious, ruminating over someone "done you wrong" in a debate, having a hard time letting go of anger around a debate, etc.

If we participate in Buddhist forums it will happen and is unavoidable it is what we choose to do with our reaction, and whether we can engage in it and gain something, or whether it is really just a net negative for us.

I like to remember the Dhammapada:
Winning gives birth to hostility.
Losing, one lies down in pain.
The calmed lie down with ease,
having set winning & losing aside.
Of course any time we interact with others there is a real possibility (hell, a probability) that we will feel pain ourselves, and possibly cause it for others through our interaction. IMO learning to work skillfully with that is part of the path, because you will not avoid it interacting with other Buddhists. The internet is worse, but I've been to plenty of contentious study groups, etc. too.

Conflict exists in every area of human life, and it is no different in Buddhism, if things are working as designed the conflict will lead to a productive place. If it's not, then just stop...that has been the best approach in my experience.
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Re: Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

The Buddha advised not to believe what he taught just because he taught it, but to test it for yourself to determine it’s truth, just as a goldsmith purchases gold: burn it, pound it, cut it, weigh it.

At the same time, it appears that there are things we can’t test out for ourselves: the existence of hungry ghosts and so forth, yidams and various celestial type beings, death and rebirth.
It appears that way, and as the Buddha noticed, sentient beings are suckers for taking appearances as solid. So we immediately write it off, thinking “nope, can’t be proven!”

But sometimes, if we really reconsider the topic, and really pound it and burn it and cut it, we may find that some things can be at least known to be true within their own context. Sometimes it takes redefining what we mean by “know”. This has been my experience, and I will give a couple of examples.

People say that we don’t know what happens after death. Standing alone, that’s a fair statement. But if we remember to put this into the context of the Buddhist teaching that there is no permanent “self”, then what dies?

Isn’t that “I” we seem to experience, that “I” we say is going to die some day, isn’t that in fact constantly arising and ceasing, each time being the cause for the next moment of the experience to occur?

I can’t say what will happen when my heart ceases to beat. But I know that at my age, “I” have already lived through more than nine entirely different bodies of cells (not to mention recently acquiring someone else’s lungs through a transplant). So, since this illusion of “me” has continued to flow like an ever-changing river through all of that, I will at least make a reasonable assumption that when I breathe my last breath, it won’t necessarily mean the consciousness-stream will suddenly dry up.
So, is rebirth “literal”? So far, yes. Constantly.

Another example is the question of these various celestial beings of the Buddhist pantheon (technically it’s not a “-theon”). Are Tara and Avalokiteshvara ‘real’? Are hungry ghosts ‘real’ or are these all just archetypal metaphors? Well, the thing about this is, by “real” we always mean “real the way you and I are real, real the way our physical world is real” . That’s not very dependable.

There is a problem in using our own subjective experience of “Me” as the standard for determining “reality” because to truly “exist” as an entity, as a “me”, in Buddhist theory, means to possess some self-existent essence (soul, atman). But Buddhist theory is that the “me” you are referring to is a collection of aggregates, in which none can be found an essential “me”.

At best, perhaps, all we can say is that pure lands and samsaric realms and everything that inhabits them are “no more real” than “I” am. In other words, if you don’t think they are real, then please explain in what basis you assert that you and I are real. I don’t mean as carbon-based life forms. I mean, where is a “me” which isn’t just as convoluted and imaginary as a Bodhisattva with a thousand arms.

In fact, it could be argued that these “metaphors” are even more real than you and I. And this argument would rest on the premise that the “you and I” that we experience right now is one of delusion, that we are basically cosplaying roles of the characters that we imagine ourselves to be, when all along, our true nature is much closer to what is “represented” by Avalokiteshvara or some other deities. It can be argued that when Vajrayana Buddhists visualize themselves as this or that yidam, it’s not so much that they are pretending to be someone else, but rather, for a few moments they stop pretending to be the character they play the rest of the 24 hours of the day, and perhaps get a glimpse of who they “really are” (meaning that we all have Buddha nature).

All I’m saying is that we really need to examine our assumptions and habitual ways we look at things, when we wonder about taking things “literally or figuratively”, and at exactly, precisely, succinctly what we marm by those terms.
Last edited by PadmaVonSamba on Mon Jan 24, 2022 12:22 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by Johnny Dangerous »

PadmaVonSamba wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 11:48 pm The Buddha advised not to believe what he taught just because he taught it, but to test it for yourself to determine it’s truth, just as a goldsmith \
All I’m saying is that we really need to examine our assumptions and habitual ways we look at things, when we wonder about taking things “literally or figuratively”, and at exactly, precisely, succinctly what we marm by those terms.


Quoting this because when I wrestling with all this stuff, this was the type of question that took my investigations in a good direction, instead of keeping things just about agreeing or disagreeing with people. :anjali:
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Re: Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by ItsRaining »

wonderingaround wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 6:09 pm Hi,
I recently encountered an online conversation whether buddhists must accept deities, the other realms etc. as fact and believe in them. I have been studying Buddhism for some time on and off and have never come across this sort of a statement. None the literature I've read (basic books by Dalai Lama, TNH, Jack Kornfield, articles on Tricycle etc.) have discussed these matters except when repeating anecdotes from Buddha's past lives to clear a point on some teaching. So everything I have encountered has taken the supernatural aspects of scripture as symbolic (eg. deities are seen as archetypes or representations of our buddha nature).
I have considered myself as a Buddhist for some time and frankly, got slightly upset that my view that I have assumed is very mainstream especially in the West is considered an insult to "real buddhists".

I would really appreciate any views on this and also how to respond if I encounter this sort of claims again.
Many thanks in advance!
Conventional right view from the perspective of Buddhism involves rebrith which the Buddha described as involving births as beings with lesser perceptions of suffering like devas. This cycle of reborth forms the basis of the four noble truths as the truth of suffering through the endless chain of dukkha and the 12 links that is the dependent arising of rebirth acting as the cause of suffering. This then acts as the basis of Buddhist thought and practice. Removing such elements would be taking out what separates Buddhists from Charvakas or materialists. You can take that as you will.

Many books like those written by TNH or Dalai Lama are introductory works with the explicit intent of introducing westerners to Buddhism where such elements are downplayed. But these are just modern introdcutory texts, for a more complete understanding of the Dharma reading sutras and sastras is more important.
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Re: Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by muni »

Scripts are of the same nature as "we": fabricated. They are necessary tools, to recognize not fabricated nature. Or we could say they are clearing up medicines. There are many kinds for many obstacles. Swallowing them merely literally as truths, is not liberating.
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Re: Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by Ayu »

I even read online how some Nyingma students were talking about heresy as soon as somebody disagreed. I think, this kind of stance doesn't represent anymore, what Mahayana is about.
Sutras have old language and they are translations for most of us. They are always an interpretation of what the Buddha said, because He himself never wrote anything down. I have to mention that heretically.
Therfore, although I don't belittle the importance of sutras, I say one should not forget about meaning, intention and essence as soon as one reads them. It is said "Listening, pondering and meditating" is the tool to proper understanding. Reading without a heart-mind is senseless, I believe.

In other words: as soon as a text sounds narrow or leads to a narrow feeling, something must be wrong (wrong within the text or in understanding). I really think so.
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Re: Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

wonderingaround wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 6:09 pm Hi,
I recently encountered an online conversation whether buddhists must accept deities, the other realms etc. as fact and believe in them.
Compared with “believe in” as the term applies to theism (i.e., Abrahamic religions), no. We don’t have to “believe” anything. In other words, it’s not crucial. The basis of Christianity, for example, is believing that Christ arose from the dead. He is said to have performed all sorts of miracles, but the back-from-the-dead thing is the one that’s pivotal. This by is doesn’t mean one can’t follow Christ’s teachings on things like forgiveness, or don’t throw the first stone or whatever, just as one can follow the teachings of Confucius or Ben Franklin. But to truly “be” a Christian requires belief in actual resurrection as historical fact.

The Buddha is also said to have displayed many miraculous feats. Getting up and walking right after taking birth, for example, with lotus flowers popping up in his baby-size footsteps. But one doesn’t need to accept that as historical fact.

It might be argued that we “believe” the Buddha attained enlightenment. But as Malcolm has discussed, “enlightenment” is a western concept, an English language term. It was used by 19th century Pali translators to refer to everything from nibbana (nirvana) or the cessation of the causes of dukkha (suffering), to the Buddha’s complete and perfect awakening and liberation from rebirth in the cycle of samsara.

What we can say is that we do believe there was a guy and he did free himself from the causes of suffering and rebirth, and more importantly, that we can do the same. Everything else about the Buddha, historically factual or not, doesn’t really matter. And, except as it might apply to certain practices or certain traditions, belief in deities and so on isn’t critical either.

And when you get right down to it, whatever a person “believes” in can never be more that what they imagine the object of their belief to be. Even a person who believes in a supreme god never really goes behind believing in what they think a supreme god is. All we ever “believe” in is our own thoughts.

Although we accept as fact an historical Buddha, what we “know” is really some kind of legend. We have stories about the Buddha, some very elaborate. That’s how it is with history. In a similar way, “Johnny Appleseed” is a legend based on an historical person, an adult named John Chapman.
He developed tree nurseries in and around Pennsylvania. But the legend we have is of a young man or boy, with a bag of apple seeds hanging on his shoulder, walking across America tossing seeds everywhere and that’s why you apple trees here and there. What scientists now theorize is that the random spread of apple trees in the northeastern half of the United States is most likely due to the Wooly Mammoths who would eat them and the poop their seeds out everywhere as they migrated.

It is entirely possible that who we refer to as the Buddha might have actually been two or three different people in different parts of India during the 40 or so years attributed to him. There isn’t any basis that I know of for assuming this to be the case, but history shows that legends often merge. Today, people follow two different Karmapas. So, anything is possible. And it might be the case that all of the Prajnaparamita literature was composed centuries after Shakyamuni. I have heard this claim. But why bring up all of this random speculation?

The point is, nobody knows who first rubbed two sticks together to make fire. But, if we do the same thing now, we will get the same results. So, the “proof” in Buddhism is in the doing, rather than in believing. In a sense, it’s scientific this way, because you can replicate what has been done before and get the same results, which people have been doing for over 2500 years.
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Re: Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by Dharmasherab »

Just like in almost all religions, Buddhism also has its teachings on aspects that are not tangible to the senses outside of realisations. Buddhism does encourage Shraddha meaning conviction/faith/ However it does not encourage blind faith either.
As for the belief in supernatural entities like deities, one can question as to how much that impacts one's practice.
Unlike Abrahamic faiths (which the west is a lot familiar with), in Buddhism, faith is not and end to itself. For example, the belief that the Buddha was a fully enlightened belief is good to begin with. But just relying on the faith aspect on its own doesn't give the full result of enlightenment. Whatever the content of the scriptures that are meant to be taken up as articles of faith are meant to be taken up in a provisional manner. When one commits to practices, and provided that one is progressing then the realisations will take place in the mind which would override the need to rely on articles of faith where one's conviction in the Dharma in now based on direct experience.
Forcing oneself to accept things when one's heart is not in it, doesn't usually end well. So best not to force any belief on yourself.
If we look at the lives of teachers including the Buddha, it was the practice that gave birth to the teaching (and not the teaching that gave birth to the practice). So when the practices go in the right direction, the doubts may dissolve. There is no need to even expect this to happen. Patience is important because the practice is not always easy but then again nothing which is worth practising has ever been easy.
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Re: Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by wonderingaround »

PadmaVonSamba wrote: Mon Jan 24, 2022 1:44 pm
wonderingaround wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 6:09 pm Hi,
I recently encountered an online conversation whether buddhists must accept deities, the other realms etc. as fact and believe in them.

The Buddha is also said to have displayed many miraculous feats. Getting up and walking right after taking birth, for example, with lotus flowers popping up in his baby-size footsteps. But one doesn’t need to accept that as historical fact.
In this unfortunate "debate" that I engaged in, the other person argued that what you mentioned above needs to be taken as fact. As well as Buddha interacting with dragons etc. in his past lives. That to call oneself a Buddhist, one must have faith in these things and that it is wrong to view the stories as metaphorical. I know this was just one loud voice on the internet but it got me thinking whether these sort of views are very common? To me it seems like one will get a very superficial understanding of Buddha's teachings if just left at that, and it also made me feel quite insecure in what I have learned this far.
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Re: Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by wonderingaround »

Brunelleschi wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 11:12 pm
wonderingaround wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 8:13 pm Thank you all for your replies!

Like with all internet arguments, I felt like an idiot for engaging in one, but couldn't help myself reading these outrageous claims.
I was so taken aback by someone claiming that a literal interpretation of the scriptures is mainstream and that I must follow some "american Zen way" to think otherwise.

Anyway, I am now trying to view this as a learning opportunity in both wise action as well as empathy towards others.
I wouldn't call "outrageous" - they're the traditional views. And yes, there are many buddhists, especially minorities in the West that feel your position is more or less a "colonial" view.
Hi, sorry I was unclear in my original post; I felt these claims were outrageous as this person was accusing me of "insulting" the practitioners of an established religion by creating my own interpretation of key concepts. What I found outrageous was that my view was considered something I have made up myself. Also, having slept on this, maybe I wouldn't use the word outrageous anymore.
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Re: Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by Malcolm »

wonderingaround wrote: Mon Jan 24, 2022 3:26 pm That to call oneself a Buddhist, one must have faith in these things and that it is wrong to view the stories as metaphorical.
Wrong view in Buddhadharma is confined to rejecting rebirth, karma, and dependent origination. Questioning the existence of nāgās and so on does not rate as wrong view.
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Re: Does buddhism require taking scripture literally?

Post by wonderingaround »

PadmaVonSamba wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 11:48 pm The Buddha advised not to believe what he taught just because he taught it, but to test it for yourself to determine it’s truth, just as a goldsmith purchases gold: burn it, pound it, cut it, weigh it.

At the same time, it appears that there are things we can’t test out for ourselves: the existence of hungry ghosts and so forth, yidams and various celestial type beings, death and rebirth.
It appears that way, and as the Buddha noticed, sentient beings are suckers for taking appearances as solid. So we immediately write it off, thinking “nope, can’t be proven!”

But sometimes, if we really reconsider the topic, and really pound it and burn it and cut it, we may find that some things can be at least known to be true within their own context. Sometimes it takes redefining what we mean by “know”. This has been my experience, and I will give a couple of examples.

People say that we don’t know what happens after death. Standing alone, that’s a fair statement. But if we remember to put this into the context of the Buddhist teaching that there is no permanent “self”, then what dies?

Isn’t that “I” we seem to experience, that “I” we say is going to die some day, isn’t that in fact constantly arising and ceasing, each time being the cause for the next moment of the experience to occur?

I can’t say what will happen when my heart ceases to beat. But I know that at my age, “I” have already lived through more than nine entirely different bodies of cells (not to mention recently acquiring someone else’s lungs through a transplant). So, since this illusion of “me” has continued to flow like an ever-changing river through all of that, I will at least make a reasonable assumption that when I breathe my last breath, it won’t necessarily mean the consciousness-stream will suddenly dry up.
So, is rebirth “literal”? So far, yes. Constantly.

Another example is the question of these various celestial beings of the Buddhist pantheon (technically it’s not a “-theon”). Are Tara and Avalokiteshvara ‘real’? Are hungry ghosts ‘real’ or are these all just archetypal metaphors? Well, the thing about this is, by “real” we always mean “real the way you and I are real, real the way our physical world is real” . That’s not very dependable.

There is a problem in using our own subjective experience of “Me” as the standard for determining “reality” because to truly “exist” as an entity, as a “me”, in Buddhist theory, means to possess some self-existent essence (soul, atman). But Buddhist theory is that the “me” you are referring to is a collection of aggregates, in which none can be found an essential “me”.

At best, perhaps, all we can say is that pure lands and samsaric realms and everything that inhabits them are “no more real” than “I” am. In other words, if you don’t think they are real, then please explain in what basis you assert that you and I are real. I don’t mean as carbon-based life forms. I mean, where is a “me” which isn’t just as convoluted and imaginary as a Bodhisattva with a thousand arms.

In fact, it could be argued that these “metaphors” are even more real than you and I. And this argument would rest on the premise that the “you and I” that we experience right now is one of delusion, that we are basically cosplaying roles of the characters that we imagine ourselves to be, when all along, our true nature is much closer to what is “represented” by Avalokiteshvara or some other deities. It can be argued that when Vajrayana Buddhists visualize themselves as this or that yidam, it’s not so much that they are pretending to be someone else, but rather, for a few moments they stop pretending to be the character they play the rest of the 24 hours of the day, and perhaps get a glimpse of who they “really are” (meaning that we all have Buddha nature).

All I’m saying is that we really need to examine our assumptions and habitual ways we look at things, when we wonder about taking things “literally or figuratively”, and at exactly, precisely, succinctly what we marm by those terms.
Thank you for your long reply. I should mention here that I personally use to ignore the notion of rebirth as "there's no way I can believe in such a supernatural thing", but after studying it more and getting a more in-depth understanding of it I have no problem accepting it. And accepting it does not require "faith" from my part. The same goes with Cosmology and the Deities - yes, I am having a hard time accepting the realms as "fact" and at face value (this would require faith), but I'm pretty sure that there are deeper meanings to these things than just the superficial notions. Me having difficulties in accepting them is likely to be due to me being ignorant rather than the concepts being unbelievable.
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