This blog entry is about three letters that Buddhists don’t usually talk about.
No, not S-G-I.
Today I’m talking about GOD.
Yep, G-O-D.
You can call it the mystic law if you prefer. Or the Source. Or the energy that makes it all happen. The little spark that animates us. The creative intelligence that keeps the wheels in motion. The creator, the higher power, the Wizard behind the screen.
Forgive me if I’m not sounding Buddhist. Lately I don’t know where “Buddhist” ends and everything else begins. And by the way, I’m encouraging this confusion in myself. I’m allowing the lines to blur. Permitting the divisions to fade. I’m surrendering and opening up to what feels right in my heart, rather than what works on paper or in theory.
So let’s talk about God.
When I was about three, I asked my dad what God was. He said, “God is anything you want God to be.” “Even a piece of toast?” I asked. “Yes, even a piece of toast,” he replied. I thought this was incredibly cool. (I still do.)
Baba Hari Dass writes, “A yogi searches for God in the world and says, “This is not God… this is not God… this is not God,” and he rejects everything. As soon as he finds God he says, “This is God… this is God.” He begins to see God in everything and accepts everything....”
God in everything. In a piece of toast. In the moon. In the wind, the flowers, the pavement, the dog pee on the patio. God is in me, in you, in every last bit of it. Now and forever.
I’m not talking about a man in the sky with a long white beard. (But you can have that version if that suits your fancy.) I’m talking about the energy within everything. The miracle of life. The fuel that makes the flowers bloom, puts the juice inside an orange, makes our hearts beat. Birth, life, death, everything in between – that’s what I mean by “God.”
Back in the ‘70s, Ram Dass (a Hindu) taught a class at the Buddhist Naropa Center. He alternated evenings with Trungpa Rinpoche (A Buddhist.) Ram Dass says, “Trungpa was teaching about meditation and emptiness, and I was teaching about devotion and the guru. The students felt like they were at a tennis match!”
I don’t think it’s a conflict to add a sense of devotion and surrender and wonder to the practice of Buddhism. For me, it’s a matter of putting gratitude for the miracle of existence or "God" at the head of everything in my practice. Acknowledging this power (or energy or source) makes me feel softer. More open. More connected to others. When we say “Namaste” at the end of my yoga class, I feel my inner light acknowledging the light within each person in the room. It’s the God in me recognizing and appreciating the God in them.
If that’s not Buddhist, oh well.
When my own child was three, out of the blue she told me, “God lives in our hearts and we live in God’s heart.”
I think I’ll hold that thought.
HRH Queen Lolo:
Shakyamuni never refuted the existence of God or gods. Apparently, he did not place importance in gods for awakening to enlightenment. Instead, he directed people to the dharma. When you read the metaphors, even the gods abided by the dharma.
I find no contradiction with belief in God or gods and Buddhism. My father was an armchair philosopher, especially after a couple of cocktails. His contention was something like this: "God doesn't care what happens on this speck of dust, floating on the spiral arm of some average galaxy in a universe with countless galaxy." I guess my dad was a supporter of an impersonal God. With the sad state of worldy affairs and natural disasters, he may be right. My take on this subject is that what people call "God" is alien - by that I mean not illegal immigrants.
Thanks for this eye opener.
Charles
Posted by: Charles at May 22, 2005 08:50 AMIn regard toyour saluting the inner light in everyone at the end of your yoga class -- a few years ago, I kind of evolved (I guess that's what it was) into saluting the Gohonzon in every person during the "second" official Gakkai prayer rather than saluting a particular engraving in Japan. I don't know how that happens, but I've been doing it now for some itm,e and I really like it.
Brian Holly has a veryvery long blog entry on the topic if theism and morality - the God you re talking about here is amystical sort ofGod, Lolo, which is fine. I guiess the problem in discussingit with others is that the God lots ofpeople worship is not mystical and all-encompassing, but is a dictator with a very specififc nationalist or cultural or other agenda. So when we use the word "God", people get confused because they don't know which of the many possible permutations of the concept you're referring to. The term becomes what we lawyers call"void for vagueness". And while some people revel in vagueness, others are driven tohammer it into form. Maybe that's one of the reaons people break out into denominations - at leats you know you're talking to people with the same set of definitions.
Thanks for raising the topic. Best, Byrd in LA
Posted by: Byrd in LA at May 22, 2005 09:59 AMDear Queen Lolo,
While I appreciate the spirit with which you define your concept of “God” I agree with Byrd that the word “God” invokes the image of an all-powerful dictator in most, or perhaps simply a ‘higher power’ somewhere ‘out there’.
I thought it most unfortunate that a year or so ago the SGI presented the formula “Namumyohorengekyo is our name for God.” It was intentionally misleading in an effort to be accepted into the mainstream of religion in the USA and thereby gain converts.
In most Christian points of view [and I am certainly not an authority on the subject], God is the all-powerful creator and everyone and everything else is the created--the relationship is one of the superior and the subordinate. While we can become more God-like, we can never become God.
In Lotus teaching, we are at this precise moment both the creator and the created. There is no higher power to appeal too. I must take full responsibility or none at all.
Something that I used to tell myself when things were down, “Time to get off your ass and do something, or go find Jesus.” And then I’d get off my ass and go do something about it.
To me, and perhaps not to you, to invoke the name of God is to blur an important distinction.
Hi Queen Lolo,
There actually is a creator god on the Omandala. The name is Bonten which is the Japanese name for Brahma. The Lotus Sutra and other sutras present Brahma as the one who requested the Buddha to teach the Dharma right after his awakening. Furthermore, it is shown the great bodhisattvas take on his appearance and in Siddhartha's past lives he claims to have been Brahma. So Brahama is also a great bodhisattva, a being of boundless compassion who upholds and protects the Dharma. Thus, his position on the Omandala Gohonzon. I often put it this way, the one Hindus call Brahma, and Jews call Adonia, and Christians call God the Father, and Muslims call Allah is actually working for us and is a personification of the creative and protective and compassionate spiritual forces that manifest the Wonderful Dharma in our lives.
Another way of thinking of this is that God as an entity, or a principle, or a force, or anything at all is just another image, a conceptual idol. These are helpful because we are creatures who need to relate to some-thing if we are going to relate at all. But the true nature (shoho jisso) is beyond any concept or image a finite being such as ourselves could have. I think this is why nirvana is spoken of almost (but not entirely) in negative terms - the Unborn, the Deathless, the Unconditioned, etc. Nirvana is what happens to us when we come to know this reality, and the Lotus Sutra shows that nirvana is not just an other-worldly escape but a boundlessly compassionate way of being in the wold while not of it - like a lotus flower.
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei
To me "nam myoho renge kyo" means "I am one with reality". I think you could say that "God" is reality. Many religious people would, but I think they would almost always add to that reality as their "God" is more than reality.
Alot of times I have heard that Shakyamuni neither endorsed or refuted the concept of God. I don't think that's true there maybe no written record of his saying there was no God but, to me it is obvious he would have neither taught or lived as he did if he believed there was one. To say that there is a God but that God has nothing to do with ending human suffering is certainly denying the type of God that most people believe in. Typically God is worshipped and I don't believe there is any instance where Shakyamuni performed this type of worship nor recommended it to anyone else. I really think the Shakyamuni didn't say thing is an expedient means used to get theists to check out what might be worthwhile in buddhism without having to give up their attatchment to God. Of course if you accept the doctrine of "no-self" the idea that there could be a God becomes impossible. I do agree though that you can become a buddhist and still believe in God, but it does seem to me the idea would have to be jettisoned before too long on the path.