http://www.fraughtwithperil.com/blogs/holte/archives/2005_10.html
Buddhism has always focused a logical arrow on Religion. It has aimed that arrow of logic, concentrated meditative thought, and enlightenment, at the heart of the existential questions that lie at the heart of our existence. That kind of thought is known as "sod" in Hebrew. It is the Sod of the PaRDeS accronym. If one considers for a moment. Wild nebbishes wandering in the desert are doing what? They are meditating. When Daniel, Ezequiel, Isaiah, or Jeremiah, had their insights. What was their source? Some kind of enlightenment. And where does enlightenment come from? Most Buddhists would say the Buddha. But the Buddha never claimed to be a God. He got his enlightenment by working for it, but only in the Lotus Sutra does he really say where he got it from. And in there he says he learned it from the Buddha "Ancient of Days" -- from the "eternal Buddha". Well if one were going to ascribe anything to such a source, it is indeed an ultimate reality.
So my own "sot" awareness is that rather than fighting the Judeo-Christian concept of "God" in my agnostic rational way. I've come to adopt that thought experiment by combining it with another. 'God' is Universe itself. Not just this major world system, but the totality of all of them. And not some "being" of imagination, but the totality behind both time and space itself. If God created the world, He created Time itself. Literalistic Christians are limiting themselves. God is a better fiction writer than they are. If God isn't enlightened -- he should be. If the world isn't enlightened -- it is our duty to transform it. If we transform ourselves, then maybe such an enlightened "God" will emerge. But then since "God" is a totality who creates time, perhaps such a being is already on it's way -- or even present. And we are just too limited to see the fruits of all this struggle we call life. Or perhaps this world is simply absurd -- in which case it won't hurt to at least try. It's on us, it's in us. We create the world we live in.
So to me, Buddhism is an approach to religion that can be perfectly compatible with any honest religion. Of course it's not going to do well with dishonest preachers, ministers, imams or con artists. Con artists actually are attracted to Buddhism because Buddhism by itself tends to be ammoral. I'm constantly reading of Buddhists whose own moral compass got lost while they wandered in the Deserts of Mongolia or enjoyed the fruits of tantra or Zen meditation. And I'm still scarred by the stories of Buddhist Japanese and World War II. But such people betray Buddhism they aren't it's true avatars. The truly religious recognize the truths of religion without freezing them into dogma and lies. And for them the insights of Buddhism are uplifting and awakening. That is a good start.
More to come.
Posted by cholte at October 24, 2005 05:36 AM