I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

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Artziebetter1
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I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by Artziebetter1 »

Namaste,I am a buddhist. I find its the most logical and uplifting alternative against my former Christian Theism.but reading buddhist arguments and atheological arguments against a creator God from buddhist sources I get confused as if there is a contradiction in what they're criticizing Ishvara for,and their beliefs in active buddhas.Shantideva says that a unconditioned permanent creator would be unchanging and thus causally inert if not inert altogether,but is there a difference between permanent and eternal?

if the Dharmakaya is unconditioned and this is the ultimate mind of all buddhas (I understand its individual and somewhat unreal)then how can they project emanations ,purelands,intentions and actions?if it is unconditioned wouldn't it be inert?

from what I understand the gelugpas say that dharmakaya is not unconditioned nor permanent but that it is eternal.is this like water being subject to its three modes in change,or is this subtle annihilationism where there is a cessation of the mind ,and a new one that takes its place every nanosecond out of nothing like in some forms of radical momentariness?and if it is the former,would this mean that once a buddha enters paranirvana and stops activity to help sentient beings,he would cease to exist in conventional usage of exist(not philosophical,I understand that nothing exists )?

and in the Dzogchen view of wisdom mind and the five lights being inherent to a mindstream,would the cessation of reifying the five lights into sense elements not mean that that mindstream of a buddha is inert and cannot act or intend,or have karuna or bodhicitta or omniscience etc?

I understand that one might say that the Buddha acts based on past merit,but that merit must necasserily be stored in the mind and have a vehicle to act its projections thru the Buddha.

please help me understand and get rid of this confusion?

if one can say that a being can be eternal but not permanent,then what is the objection to the theist that can claim his God is eternal but not unchanging like Dr. Dale Tuggy ?it seems that buddhist criticism of theism would only apply to its Thomistic or Classical islamic(like Ghazali) and Jewish maimonidean forms and not all Theism.in that case my faith would be somewhat shakey as I'm already scared I will go to eternal Hell for rejecting Jesus 'saving atonement' and Godhood,ressurection etc .

:anjali:
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Re: I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by Kim O'Hara »

Artziebetter1 wrote: Mon Nov 01, 2021 11:14 pm ... I'm already scared I will go to eternal Hell for rejecting Jesus 'saving atonement' and Godhood,ressurection etc .

:anjali:
If this is still worrying you, you haven't given up your faith in the Christian God.

Christianity is a package deal with optional extras.
Eternal hell or heaven for rejecting or accepting Jesus' saving atonement is nonsense unless you believe that God the Father does exist, that Jesus was somehow part of God and that He judges us (by His standards, not ours) and treats us accordingly. That's the package, and it's all-or-nothing. Saints are optional extras, and the scriptures (Catholic, Protestant, whatever) are somewhat variable, but you can't have Hell without the other core elements.

If you can recite the Creed and mean it, you're Christian. The Buddhist equivalent is the three-part Refuge statement. I know which I choose, but I'm not going to say which one you should choose. What I would say instead is that you can't really have both.

Sure, you can be a good Christian and still accept that Buddhism has a lot of good teachings, or you can be a good Buddhist and think of Jesus as a wise (human!) teacher, but at some point you have to say, "I know this is correct so that simply must be wrong."

Best wishes on the path.

:namaste:
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Re: I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by yagmort »

for what it's worth, i asked 2 people, 1 is just an acquintance of mine and another one is a close friend about God. both are from Eastern Orthodox Christianity. my friend used to be a monk for 6 years. an aqcuintance is still a monk on Mount Athos. both of them told me there is no idea of God as some ultimate, highest, supreme deity, white-bearded father figure. God is not an entity. in fact, the nature of God is beyond our cognition. so they both told me it is almost impossible to explain what God exactly is. one said to say in an accessible and simplified way God is Love. i also found old text named "The Cloud of Unknowing" which is along the line of what i've been told.
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Re: I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by Kim O'Hara »

yagmort wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 4:37 am for what it's worth, i asked 2 people, 1 is just an acquintance of mine and another one is a close friend about God. both are from Eastern Orthodox Christianity. my friend used to be a monk for 6 years. an aqcuintance is still a monk on Mount Athos. both of them told me there is no idea of God as some ultimate, highest, supreme deity, white-bearded father figure. God is not an entity. in fact, the nature of God is beyond our cognition. so they both told me it is almost impossible to explain what God exactly is. one said to say in an accessible and simplified way God is Love. i also found old text named "The Cloud of Unknowing" which is along the line of what i've been told.
:twothumbsup:
Yes, that view exists alongside the one I described. It's much more sophisticated, though, and much less widely accepted.

At some levels, the contemplation of this unknowable deity begins to overlap with the mystical traditions in other religions, e.g. sufism, and eventually meets up with Buddhism. But it's not the Christianity that the OP was worried by, so it's somewhat off-topic here.

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Re: I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by yagmort »

Kim O'Hara wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 5:17 am...this unknowable deity...
as i said i've been told God _is not a deity/entity_, at least according to Eastern Orthodox Christianity tradition.

Kim O'Hara wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 5:17 am... But it's not the Christianity that the OP was worried by, so it's somewhat off-topic here.
imho it is of direct import to the OP's question because i got the impression that the whole idea of creator God of Christianity has been misunderstood. when people say "god", "creator" we immediately drowning in the ocean of semantic problems. i got no idea why people assume every one got the same meaning about these 2 words.
as i pointed out in the example above, christians do not think of God as some sort of highest, supreme, separate creator entity which governs this universe. just saying. but of course it is up to Artziebetter1 to decide were my words of any help or not..
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Re: I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by Archie2009 »

More sophisticated or not, the burden of proof is still on believers in such a mystical creator god. All such proofs that are offered are laughable.

In Buddhism you can just do the work and experience the ultimate for yourself. People have and will continue to do so.

Free yourself from childhood indoctrination. Nobody's going to eternal hell for rejecting Jesus and his ceator father, the most unpleasant character in all fiction (a phrase coined by Richard Dawkins.)
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Re: I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by Kim O'Hara »

yagmort wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 6:30 am
Kim O'Hara wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 5:17 am...this unknowable deity...
as i said i've been told God _is not a deity/entity_, at least according to Eastern Orthodox Christianity tradition.

Kim O'Hara wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 5:17 am... But it's not the Christianity that the OP was worried by, so it's somewhat off-topic here.
imho it is of direct import to the OP's question because i got the impression that the whole idea of creator God of Christianity has been misunderstood. when people say "god", "creator" we immediately drowning in the ocean of semantic problems. i got no idea why people assume every one got the same meaning about these 2 words.
as i pointed out in the example above, christians do not think of God as some sort of highest, supreme, separate creator entity which governs this universe. just saying.
"christians do not think of God as some sort of highest, supreme, separate creator entity which governs this universe" is way too broad - so broad it's far more wrong than right.
A few (very few) christians do not think of God as some sort of highest, supreme, separate creator entity which governs this universe.
Most (nearly all) christians do think of God as some sort of highest, supreme, separate creator entity which governs this universe.
... but of course it is up to Artziebetter1 to decide were my words of any help or not..
Sure.

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Re: I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by yagmort »

Kim O'Hara wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 7:00 am...A few (very few) christians do not think of God as some sort of highest, supreme, separate creator entity which governs this universe.
Most (nearly all) christians do think of God as some sort of highest, supreme, separate creator entity which governs this universe...
according to wikipedia, "Eastern Orthodox Church, also called the Orthodox Church, is the second-largest Christian church, with approximately 220 million baptised members.." of course not all baptised members share the same idea about the nature of God, and only a fracture of all baptised members are monks, but imho it is monks' opinion which is much closer to the truth of a tradition.
so imho to say that "nearly all christians do think of God as some sort of highest, supreme, separate creator entity which governs this universe..." is an overstretch. if they do they contradict their own tradition. i speak of only Eastern Orthodox Church here. anyway, i am not christian so what do i know. just thought i shared the info.

apologiez for the offtopic.
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Re: I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by Kim O'Hara »

yagmort wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 8:05 am
Kim O'Hara wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 7:00 am...A few (very few) christians do not think of God as some sort of highest, supreme, separate creator entity which governs this universe.
Most (nearly all) christians do think of God as some sort of highest, supreme, separate creator entity which governs this universe...
according to wikipedia, "Eastern Orthodox Church, also called the Orthodox Church, is the second-largest Christian church, with approximately 220 million baptised members.." of course not all baptised members share the same idea about the nature of God, and only a fracture of all baptised members are monks, but imho it is monks' opinion which is much closer to the truth of a tradition.
so imho to say that "nearly all christians do think of God as some sort of highest, supreme, separate creator entity which governs this universe..." is an overstretch. if they do they contradict their own tradition. i speak of only Eastern Orthodox Church here. anyway, i am not christian so what do i know. just thought i shared the info.

apologiez for the offtopic.
So ... you admit that your knowledge is partial, biased, based on very weak evidence, and may be incorrect, and yet you still say that I am wrong.
:rolleye:

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Re: I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by yagmort »

no, i admit nothing of the sort.
i merely shared the info given to me by 2 adherents of Eastern Orthodox Church, whose opinion on the subject are much more valid to me than some hearsay of what people think christian god is vs how it is actually described in the tradition.
but you can understand my words whatever way suits you :)
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Re: I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by iskaral »

I’m not going to weigh in on the god question but regarding your eternal vs permanent. From the gelug perspective I was taught, there may be other presentations.

Permanent = not changing moment by moment. The opposite to momentary.
Eternal = lasting forever. The opposite to temporary

So you have four conceptual categories.
1) That which does not change moment by moment and lasts forever (space in some systems but this is a controversial example)
2) That which does change moment by moment and lasts forever (mental continuum)
3) That which does not change moment by moment and lasts forever (I don’t think there are any actual example of this but it would be something that is exactly the same and inchangé then pops out of existence suddenly)
4) That which does change moment by moment and does not last forever (most things)
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Re: I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by Astus »

Artziebetter1 wrote: Mon Nov 01, 2021 11:14 pmif the Dharmakaya is unconditioned and this is the ultimate mind of all buddhas (I understand its individual and somewhat unreal)then how can they project emanations ,purelands,intentions and actions?if it is unconditioned wouldn't it be inert?
The dharmakaya is unconditioned because it's not a thing, rather it refers to the complete absence of obscurations, or from another perspective it's emptiness just like the emptiness of everything else (i.e. dharmadhatu). The form bodies have the dharmakaya as their essence, so to speak, but it's not like that the dharmakaya is some sort of creator. Not unlike all other phenomena, a buddha is without substance/self and appears because of various conditions. For a short summary you can look up the last two chapters of The Jewel Ornament of Liberation by Gampopa.
if one can say that a being can be eternal but not permanent,then what is the objection to the theist that can claim his God is eternal but not unchanging
The problem starts with the idea of a 'being'. To say there is one and the same being who continues to exist from one moment to the next, that is basically the view of a permanent self/soul/being/entity/substance.
1 Myriad dharmas are only mind.
Mind is unobtainable.
What is there to seek?

2 If the Buddha-Nature is seen,
there will be no seeing of a nature in any thing.

3 Neither cultivation nor seated meditation —
this is the pure Chan of Tathagata.

4 With sudden enlightenment to Tathagata Chan,
the six paramitas and myriad means
are complete within that essence.


1 Huangbo, T2012Ap381c1 2 Nirvana Sutra, T374p521b3; tr. Yamamoto 3 Mazu, X1321p3b23; tr. J. Jia 4 Yongjia, T2014p395c14; tr. from "The Sword of Wisdom"
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Re: I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by Astus »

Kim O'Hara wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 7:00 am
yagmort wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 6:30 am imho it is of direct import to the OP's question because i got the impression that the whole idea of creator God of Christianity has been misunderstood. when people say "god", "creator" we immediately drowning in the ocean of semantic problems. i got no idea why people assume every one got the same meaning about these 2 words.
as i pointed out in the example above, christians do not think of God as some sort of highest, supreme, separate creator entity which governs this universe. just saying.
"christians do not think of God as some sort of highest, supreme, separate creator entity which governs this universe" is way too broad - so broad it's far more wrong than right.
A few (very few) christians do not think of God as some sort of highest, supreme, separate creator entity which governs this universe.
Most (nearly all) christians do think of God as some sort of highest, supreme, separate creator entity which governs this universe.
It's probably easier to just look up commonly provided definitions:

'What idea of the essence and essential attributes of God may be derived from divine revelation?
That God is a Spirit, eternal, all-good, omniscient, all-just, almighty, omnipresent, unchangeable, all-sufficing to himself, all-blessed.'

(The Longer Catechism of The Orthodox, Catholic, Eastern Church, §86)

'What can we learn from Scriptures? We can learn some of the attributes of God. We will point out how Scripture tells us that God is Spirit, Eternal, Good, Omniscient, All-Righteous, Omnipresent, Unchangeable and Unity.'
(Catechism of the Orthodox Faith)

'We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.'
(The Nicene Creed)
1 Myriad dharmas are only mind.
Mind is unobtainable.
What is there to seek?

2 If the Buddha-Nature is seen,
there will be no seeing of a nature in any thing.

3 Neither cultivation nor seated meditation —
this is the pure Chan of Tathagata.

4 With sudden enlightenment to Tathagata Chan,
the six paramitas and myriad means
are complete within that essence.


1 Huangbo, T2012Ap381c1 2 Nirvana Sutra, T374p521b3; tr. Yamamoto 3 Mazu, X1321p3b23; tr. J. Jia 4 Yongjia, T2014p395c14; tr. from "The Sword of Wisdom"
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Re: I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by PeterC »

yagmort wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 6:30 am
Kim O'Hara wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 5:17 am...this unknowable deity...
as i said i've been told God _is not a deity/entity_, at least according to Eastern Orthodox Christianity tradition.
Artus beat me to it, but every brand of christianity has articles of faith which define what that sect believes. Of course individuals may or may not accept them, but not accepting them is at best a sin and at worst a heresy.

The Eastern Orthodox church follows Gregory Palamas on the essence-energy distinction. God manifests as energy in the world, but his essence is unknowable. This then poses the problem of how do you unify with god if his essence is unknowable. But they absolutely do conceive of god in his essence as separate from the world, possessing intentionality, distinct from creation, abiding outside of time and space, etc. The christian can't get to god's vantage point but knows god through his actions within creation.

This stuff is quite subtle, though, and there is a strong mystical theme in the Orthodox church, and individual members may well misunderstand this and present their belief in god in a different way. But this is what their rules say.
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Re: I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

:good: I think this is the best answer.
Astus wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 10:01 am
Artziebetter1 wrote: Mon Nov 01, 2021 11:14 pmif the Dharmakaya is unconditioned and this is the ultimate mind of all buddhas (I understand its individual and somewhat unreal)then how can they project emanations ,purelands,intentions and actions?if it is unconditioned wouldn't it be inert?
The dharmakaya is unconditioned because it's not a thing, rather it refers to the complete absence of obscurations, or from another perspective it's emptiness just like the emptiness of everything else (i.e. dharmadhatu). The form bodies have the dharmakaya as their essence, so to speak, but it's not like that the dharmakaya is some sort of creator. Not unlike all other phenomena, a buddha is without substance/self and appears because of various conditions. For a short summary you can look up the last two chapters of The Jewel Ornament of Liberation by Gampopa.
if one can say that a being can be eternal but not permanent,then what is the objection to the theist that can claim his God is eternal but not unchanging
The problem starts with the idea of a 'being'. To say there is one and the same being who continues to exist from one moment to the next, that is basically the view of a permanent self/soul/being/entity/substance.
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Re: I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by Harimoo »

PeterC wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 11:13 am
yagmort wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 6:30 am
Kim O'Hara wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 5:17 am...this unknowable deity...
as i said i've been told God _is not a deity/entity_, at least according to Eastern Orthodox Christianity tradition.
The Eastern Orthodox church follows Gregory Palamas on the essence-energy distinction. God manifests as energy in the world, but his essence is unknowable. This then poses the problem of how do you unify with god if his essence is unknowable. But they absolutely do conceive of god in his essence as separate from the world, possessing intentionality, distinct from creation, abiding outside of time and space, etc. The christian can't get to god's vantage point but knows god through his actions within creation.

This stuff is quite subtle, though, and there is a strong mystical theme in the Orthodox church, and individual members may well misunderstand this and present their belief in god in a different way. But this is what their rules say.
Hi,

I will add that what has been said above is also valid for other Abrahamic traditions : judaism and islam, and that at the spirituality level, God is not only the Creator but the Manifestation itself.
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Re: I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by Matt J »

The Buddha didn't reject the idea of a creator God because it lacked a sophisticated argument. Rather, whether there is a Creator or not, people are suffering. So if there is a Creator who refused to remove suffering, or there isn't a Creator, the problem is the same--- we are suffering and have to do the work.
Artziebetter1 wrote: Mon Nov 01, 2021 11:14 pm if one can say that a being can be eternal but not permanent,then what is the objection to the theist that can claim his God is eternal but not unchanging like Dr. Dale Tuggy ?it seems that buddhist criticism of theism would only apply to its Thomistic or Classical islamic(like Ghazali) and Jewish maimonidean forms and not all Theism.in that case my faith would be somewhat shakey as I'm already scared I will go to eternal Hell for rejecting Jesus 'saving atonement' and Godhood,ressurection etc .
"The world is made of stories, not atoms."
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Re: I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by Schrödinger’s Yidam »

Buddha Activity is covered in the last chapter of The Uttaratantra. That material, with commentary, is also found in the last chapter of Gampopa’s “Jewell Ornament of Liberation”.

Check it out.
1.The problem isn’t ‘ignorance’. The problem is the mind you have right now. (H.H. Karmapa XVII @NYC 2/4/18)
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3. Student: Lama, I thought I might die but then I realized that the 3 Jewels would protect me.
Lama: Even If you had died the 3 Jewels would still have protected you. (DW post by Fortyeightvows)
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Re: I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by Chenda »

yagmort wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 8:05 am
Kim O'Hara wrote: Tue Nov 02, 2021 7:00 am...A few (very few) christians do not think of God as some sort of highest, supreme, separate creator entity which governs this universe.
Most (nearly all) christians do think of God as some sort of highest, supreme, separate creator entity which governs this universe...
according to wikipedia, "Eastern Orthodox Church, also called the Orthodox Church, is the second-largest Christian church, with approximately 220 million baptised members.." of course not all baptised members share the same idea about the nature of God, and only a fracture of all baptised members are monks, but imho it is monks' opinion which is much closer to the truth of a tradition.
so imho to say that "nearly all christians do think of God as some sort of highest, supreme, separate creator entity which governs this universe..." is an overstretch. if they do they contradict their own tradition. i speak of only Eastern Orthodox Church here. anyway, i am not christian so what do i know. just thought i shared the info.

apologiez for the offtopic.
It is not a common view among Orthodox Christians.
With the wisdom of threefold purity, dedicate all the virtue gained from having made such effort toward enlightenment. Dedicate it to clear away the suffering of infinite beings. This is the way of a Bodhisattva.
Gyalsé Ngulchu Tokmé (རྒྱལ་སྲས་དངུལ་ཆུ་ཐོགས་མེད་), The Thirty-Seven Practices of All the Bodhisattvas
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Re: I'm confused about Buddhist arguments against a creator God and what that entails for buddha activity?

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

If something is created, then for it to be that “thing” it must be in a finished state, like a clay pot which has been fired in a kiln and can no longer be shaped or affected by water. Otherwise, it is still beingcreated, subject to constant change, and if it changes, then of itself or within itself, it cannot be said to have any established or fixed identity. It’s identity as an object is only something which is imputed on it.

For example, the ocean. For all intents and purposes (as far as we Earthlings are concerned) it is both eternal and unchanging in so far as if you go to the beach and watch the waves roll in, you are seeing exactly the same picture as someone who went to the beach would have seen thousands of years ago.

On the other hand, the ocean is constantly changing. The tide goes in and out, the waves go up and down, the sea level rises and falls and the temperature changes.

The appearance of the ocean as a constant and unchanging entity is something we impute. It’s true from our perspective, but it’s an entirely conceptual designation. Similarly, we say that the sun rises and sets. It has the appearance of moving across our sky, revolving around the Earth, which is what people once believed.

This, in Buddhism, is what might be described as “relative truths”. In terms of ultimate truths, not only is the Earth rotating the Sun, but our planet is far from being finished. It is as though are living on the crusty surface of a cake in the oven, whose center is still very much a hot liquid. If God created the Universe, then he didn’t finish the job, because much of it is still, constantly, coming into existence.

Unfortunately, the biblical creation story only seems to deal in relative truths. And when you get right down to it, if you reject the concept of an ultimately existing “self” or “soul” (as Buddhism does), then the concept of a creator of that self/soul is pointless. If nothing can be found which we can establish as created (finished) then there is no creator.

The idea of Dharmakaya has nothing to do with creation. It is more of an expression of the constantly changing (emptiness) nature of reality, from which all appearances arise.
Last edited by PadmaVonSamba on Tue Nov 02, 2021 2:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
EMPTIFUL.
An inward outlook produces outward insight.
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