I have heard it said numerous times, by friends and authors, that Buddhism should be considered as separate from the major world religions, as it is more of a way of life or philosophy than it is a religion.
Having perused some of the secondary Buddhist literature and attended some of the Buddhist groups here in Vancouver, B.C., I can testify to the fact that there is a contingent of modern day theorists and practitioners that seem to approach Buddhism as if it were only a set of meditation practices or a simple set of moral principles. Indeed, Buddhism has an extensive range of teachings on the philosophy and practice of meditation and does inculcate many practical philosophical and moral teachings, many of which can be found in the Dhammapada.
But there is also a mystical aspect of the Buddhist canon—timeless teachings that, when compared to the equally timeless claims and teachings of the other major world religions, compel the reader of just mind to include Buddhism within that lineage of major world religions.
I’d like to briefly touch upon three of these seemingly eternal, mystic principles, and these are as follows: Infallible knowledge of the universe; the existence of God, and the existence of an afterlife.
Infallible Knowledge of the Universe
The Buddha has been credited with the following claim:
From time to time a Tathagata is born into the world, a fully Enlightened One, blessed and worthy, abounding in wisdom and goodness, happy, with knowledge of the world, unsurpassed as a guide to erring mortals, a teacher of gods and men, a Blessed Buddha. He, by himself, thoroughly understands, and sees, as it were, face to face this universe. (Momen, 1995)
To summarize the words above, the Buddha has claimed to be “a fully Enlightened One” who possesses knowledge of the world and the universe that is “unsurpassed” by “gods and men”. It is claimed that it is “[the Buddha], by himself, [who] thoroughly understands, and sees” this world and this universe.
The Gospel of Buddha, the renowned and highly acclaimed translation of Buddhist texts by Paul Carus (1915), inculcates the Buddha’s claim of being the Enlightened One, and of being the revealer of the Dharma, the truth, the sacred law, and the religion (XII, V6-7).
This claim of the Buddha—that of being a source of a perfect and transcendent knowledge for humanity—is one that is shared by Jesus, Muhammad, Bahá’u’lláh, and all the other Founders of the world’s major religions.
The Existence of God
The Buddha has said, “I am the Lord’s own son, born of his mouth…[exalted by] an Absolute” (Rosen, 2010, p. 228).
The Buddha repeatedly claimed to be a “teacher of gods and men” (Momen, 1995). We know that the Buddha’s life and times were steeped in the Hindu religion, which clearly teaches that there is one God above all men, above all other gods—one God above all beings—one God of the universe (Parrinder, 1996, p. 57). Logically, if there is one God above all other gods, and the Buddha is the teacher of gods and men, it follows that the Buddha must have been an Emissary of the one true God.
Perhaps Harold Rosen (2010, p. 222) explains it best when he writes the following:
It is true that Buddha considered theological speculation to be unedifying, and taught that the character of unconditioned nirvana could not be delineated without misrepresenting it. However, there are many indications that Buddha affirmed an impersonal, transcendent reality beyond the gods—an Unconditioned Absolute out of which the conditioned universe continually arises.
The Existence of an Afterlife
The Buddhist canon makes reference to realms beyond this physical existence, realms beyond physical death. For example, Momen (1995) credits the Buddha with saying, “The messengers of death are waiting. You are going to travel far away. Have you any provision for the journey?” and, “the wise man rejoices in giving, and thereby becomes happy in the realms above.”
Like Christ, Buddha has taught that “by faith you shall be free and go beyond the realm of death.” Although the Buddha did not encourage the individual to formulate images of him or herself in heaven, He did speak of the importance of virtue and faith in attaining to the “bliss of a life immortal” (Carus, 1915), a life beyond earthly rebirth. Rosen (2010, p. 222) explains, “…much of [the Buddha’s] description of nirvana can be viewed as affirming the divine realm…” and “much of what [the Buddha] affirmed about Himself implies a realm from which He drew His powers and wisdom, and toward which He directed humanity.”
Conclusion
The Buddha claimed to have knowledge of the universe that transcended the knowledge of gods and men—religious and/or scientific knowledge, for example—Buddha was an Emissary beyond the “lesser gods” and men. He spoke of the existence of an Unconditioned Absolute—the Source of His knowledge, which shares similar characteristics to the concept of an impersonal (that is, non-corporeal) God. Finally, the Buddha alluded to the existence of a life to follow earthly, physical existence.
In my opinion, these are three concepts that highlight the mystical nature of Buddhism, and firmly establish its place among the world’s major religions.
============================ References ============================
Carus, P. (1915). The Gospel of Buddha. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court.
Momen, M. (1995). Buddhism and the Baha’i’ Faith. Oxford: George Ronald.
Parrinder, G. (1996). The Bhagavad Gita: A verse translation. Oxford: Oneworld.
Rosen, H. (2010). Founders of faith: The parallel lives of God’s Messengers. Wilmette, Illinois: Baha’i’ Publishing.
13 comments
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Stephen Friberg
April 29, 2011 at 9:52 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Hi Jason:
Having lived 10 years in Japan, a nominally Buddhist country, and having visited Buddhist temples in large metropolitan and in isolated mountain regions, and having attended my father-in-laws Buddhist funeral, I have to smile whenever I hear westerners talking about Buddhism as a meditation discipline or as a atheistic spiritual path. In reality, it is full of God and gods, heavens, afterlives, i.e., the full paraphernalia of a world religion.
My reading is that many westerners think that it is old-fashioned – even irrational – to believe in God. But, they still sense – or know – that they need a spiritual path. Buddhism seems to provide that, and it has a super-sophisticated psychological component. Zen, with its mix of Buddhist vigor and Chinese Taoist thinking is extra-ordinarily attractive to me too.
So, my thinking is that Baha’is and non-Baha’is alike need to learn from this Buddhist thinking, so much of which is fresh and provocative to us.
jason
April 29, 2011 at 4:40 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Thank you Stephen. i agree.
Ian H
May 9, 2011 at 10:36 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Jason, I really enjoyed this thoughtfully written and insightful post.
Theo H. Miller
July 9, 2011 at 7:20 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
The belief that by passing under old spiritual texts transmits their power without having read them may seem a phantasy to the western mind however meditation has both a material and a spiritual aspect. Their is no doubt from the references you quote that Budda received revelations from God. Their spiritual revelations have ceased but material revelations through the meditative faculty are still possible. The vain attempt to encourage spiritual revelations by passing under the Holy writings are understandable and even perhaps found in the western practice of not reading their own Holy writings . The Islamic destruction of their larger images of Budda are disgraceful even if they hope that larger images of Budda will attract spiritual revelations. The good nature of Buddiists in Tibet at least are a lasting blessing they should be proud of sharing with the rest of us.
Maya Bohnhoff
July 11, 2011 at 2:14 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “passing under the old spiritual texts”. Could you explain?
Stephen Kent Gray
March 27, 2013 at 12:03 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Buddhism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Jainism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Hinduism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism_in_Hinduism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_(philosophy)
One of your arguments is flawed because not all Hindus believe in God as referenced by the Wikipedia article. Buddhism’s status as a nastika dharma makes it hard to extrapolate info on Buddhism from Hinduism which is the astika dharma according to Hindus. Jainism appeared at around the same time as Buddhism, but that would be equally wrong to use that as a template to understand Buddhism despite being another nastika dharma.
Your argument requires people to superimpose the beliefs of Hinduism onto Buddhism rather than on the explicit teachings of Buddhism. Also, you make quote from references, but ultimately obscure the original sources those sources are quoting from. Also, I recognize some of those quotes as being from Hindu Puranas and not Buddhist Sutras. You also mangle the quotes rather than show the full quotes or the context of the quotes. You obviously read even these dubious quotes with an obvious theistic bias.
Maya Bohnhoff
March 27, 2013 at 2:27 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
“Your argument requires people to superimpose the beliefs of Hinduism onto Buddhism rather than on the explicit teachings of Buddhism.”
But isn’t this rather like saying that understanding, say, Christ’s words about the Greatest Commandment (Love the Lord your God with all your soul) “requires people to superimpose the beliefs of (Judiasm) onto Christianity?
Buddha’s explicit teachings assume an understanding of Hinduism because His faith is rooted in Hinduism very much as the Christian faith is rooted in Judaism. In some cases, He is repurposing the contents of earlier writings.
Westernized Zen Buddhism has certainly taken Buddha out of this context, but I question the value of that in understanding what the Buddha intended.
Stephen Kent Gray
March 28, 2013 at 10:52 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence_of_God
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptions_of_God
Well, you could say the same thing about Jainism, Ajivaka, or Carvaka aka Lokayata.
Also, their comparisons to Hinduism as comparing Chrsitianity to Judaism is flawed, because Christianity affirms Judaism and the Old Testament. On the other hand, Buddhism, Jainism, Ajivaka, and Carvaka all reject Hinduism, the Vedas, and all other Hindu scriptures as well. The may accept some Hindu concepts like karma, dharma, and reincarnation, but they reject a whole lot more concepts. Also, you will find both Hindu arguments for and against the existence of God on the Wikipedia page. Hinduism is Nyaya, Vasheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Mimamsa, and Vedanta. All except Vedanta have atheistic interpretations. Vedanta and some latter forms of Samkyha and Nyaya have theistic interpretations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shramana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ājīvika
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purana_Kassapa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makkhali_Gosala
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajita_Kesakambali
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakudha_Kaccayana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahāvīra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanjaya_Belatthaputta
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cārvāka
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_Jainism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_Hinduism
One could say Jainism and Buddhism are twin religions and Mahavira and Buddha also as twins as well. The rejection of a supreme God is common to both Jainism and Buddhism. The page on Hinduism and Buddhism explicitly lists God as a difference not a similarity. It shows both what Buddha accepted in Hinduism in similarities and what he rejected in differences as well.
Buddhism
Buddhism rejects an all powerful creator God. Buddhists may believe in devas, unless they interpret them figuratively as a literary device, beings with super human powers, and have nothing to do with humans. Like humans, devas are in samsara and are reborn according to their karma. Buddhism says the multiverse is eternal.
Jainism
Jainism is an old religion dating back to ancient India. India did have periods of Jain majority in its history, which ended at during the 700s due to Hindu and Islamic persecution of Buddhism and Jainism causing them to greatly decline in numbers to where they are today in India. Jains have been noted for strict morality, asceticism, and devotion to learning. Jainism rejects a Creator or Controller of the multiverse. The multiverse is held to exist eternally.
Maya Bohnhoff
April 1, 2013 at 2:00 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Having studied the teachings attributed to Buddha, I reject the idea that Buddha’s rejection of a “creator God” is atheistic. It is certainly atheistic in terms of the glorified human that some western conceptions of God amount to, but when I ask my Buddhist colleagues to describe what they DO believe, their “not God” is startlingly similar to my own definitions of God. That is, I don’t believe in the same God they don’t believe in.
My study inclines me to believe that what Buddha was rejecting was the concept of God prevalent among the people He taught. That He invoked a Deity is clear in such passages as His argument to the Brahmins that He knew the path to Brahma as one who had been born in the world of Brahma and therefore knew the way to it. (Christ said essentially the same thing.) His references to the Unformed and Unborn without which we, the formed and born, would have no escape from the realm of the formed; His statement that all of a person’s life is “Brahma-faring” and a relationship with the Lovely; His words about the Absolute, the First Cause, all point to the assumption of a God.
Nor do I see anything in Buddha’s teachings that argue against the idea that the essence of a human being is what Krishna referred to as atman—or more specifically, the spirit of God in man. It is certainly possible that other philosophies have contaminated what we know of Buddha, but then it becomes necessary to ask which philosophies are contaminants and which are not?
Much of what I observed about seeming contradictions in Buddha’s teachings can be attributed to our inability to perceive the relationships between the various writings rather than any real conflict of meaning.
I think, too, that the teachings of other Buddhas–and I include Christ, Krishna, and Baha’u'llah in that number–provide a useful context for understanding the teachings of Gautama Buddha. As I said, I think there is a tendency to wrest these Figures out of their contexts–to forget that, for example, some of Buddha’s sermons were responses to things His listeners were picking up from competing philosophies (Jainism, for example) or that He could assume certain points of common understanding among the people He taught and therefore did not find it necessary to address them specifically. The same is true of Christ: He assumes a certain substrate is present in His listeners’ understanding of religion and God. He often–like Buddha– seeks to redefine or reframe that understanding, but He does not rewrite the Torah, nor does Buddha rewrite the Vedas, the Upanishads or the Bhagavad Gita.
Stephen Kent Gray
April 2, 2013 at 12:40 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
The Sanskrit word for God is Ishwara. The Buddha never affirmed the existence of Ishwara and denied the view of Ishwara existing. Sages like Kapila founder of the Samkhya school of Hinduism for instance agreed on the atheistic rejection of Ishwara. The Sanskrit term for atheism is Nir-Ishwara-Vada which means without God view. God or Ishwara has no place in the Buddhist cosmology and some interpretations of the Hindu cosmology. It wasn’t until the time of Ramanuja and other sages that indentification of Ishwara as Vishnu, Krishna, or Shiva became central to Hnduism. Also, identification as Ishwari as Shakti also became popular as well.
I admit there are several technically atheistic lines from the sutras that may appear to be theistic to anyone not familiar with the affore mentioned information.
Adi Shankara and Advaita Vedanta as well as Kapila and Samkyha are good examples of Hindu atheism. A Westerner may mistakingly equate God with concepts like Brahman, Nirguna Brahman of Advaita Vedanta only here, and Purusha, but Kapila and Adi Shakara explicitly taught against such a view. Note, some Hindus have considered the above views as mayavada and nastika, but most Hindus consider these views astika.
Brahma in the Buddhist cosmology is different from Brahma in the Hindu cosmology. The multiverse is eternal while individual universes undergo cycles of birth and death just like sentient beings. At the birth of a universe a Maha Brahma is born as the first sentient being of that universe cycle. As he sees various other sentient beings and such being born he mistakenly thinks he is God and the creator of all he sees. He teaches that to various sentient beings. Thus propagating the error of theism.
While it is true the Buddha tailored his message to his audience in most sutras. He did teach the whole truth in sutras close to his death in sutras like the Saddharma Pundarika or Lotus Sutra.
Also, no Buddhists take seriously the concept of externalist Buddhas like Muhammad, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, Bahaullah, L. Ron Hubbard, Raël, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Gung Ye, Empress Wu Zeitan, Xiang Haiming, Lu Zhongyi, Adi Da Samraj, Emperor Nurhaci, Peter Deunov, Ruth Norman aka Uriel, Samael Aun Weor, Jim Jones, Arrifin Mohammed, etc.
Also, there are no contradictions in the sutras. The are atheistic lines in the sutras and atheistic lines in the sutras that appear theistic to the uniformed, thus only the appearance of a contradiction.
Stephen Kent Gray
March 27, 2013 at 12:27 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.061.than.html
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.022.than.html
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.086.than.html
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/godidea.html
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.01.0.bodh.html
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an04/an04.077.than.html
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.063.than.html
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/figen/bl085.html
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/mahasi/wheel298.html
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/devotion.html
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/awakening.html
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sagga/loka.html
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/jootla/wheel414.html
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.11.0.than.html
http://hhdl.dharmakara.net/hhdlquotes22.html
I forgot to add the Access to Insight links. They were referenced on Wikipedia, but I felt direct links to the pages would be better. All articles are written by sutra scholars and other experts on Buddhism.
Stephen Kent Gray
April 1, 2013 at 10:01 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Vedic_religion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_religions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_philosophy
Technically, the religion common in India during the Buddhas time was historical Vedism, which is a sort of Pre Hinudism. Various non Vedic philosophies arose in India. Veda based ones are or became Hinduism. Veda rejecting ones became the Shramana movement which includes Carvaka, Jainism, Ajivakism, and Buddhism.
We may take as instances the Word of Buddha-Anatta (absence of an atman or soul), which laid its axe to the root of Hindu cosmology, theology and psychology, and incidentally knocked away the foundation of the caste system; and indeed of all accepted morality. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi: “The nirvana of the Buddhists is shunyata, emptiness, but the nirvana of the Gita means peace and that is why it is described as brahma-nirvana [oneness with Brahman].”
The various Shramana philosophies did sometimes agree with Hinduism on some points, but they rejected alot of the concepts of Hinduism as well. The existence of a supreme God above all is universally rejected among the Shramana philosophies. One could for instance substitute Mahavira or Parshva or any other thinker of the Shramana movement for Buddha in the above article, to point out how absurd the argument is.
Stephen Kent Gray
April 1, 2013 at 12:15 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Early Naiyayikas wrote very little about Ishvara (literally, the Supreme Soul). However, later Buddhists in India had become from agnostic to strictly atheistic. As a reaction, the later Naiyayikas entered into disputes with the Buddhists and tried to prove the existence of God on the basis of inference. They made this question a challenge to their own existence. Udayana’s Nyayakusumanjali gave the following nine arguments to prove the existence of creative God:[6]
A Wikipedia quote of Nyaya Hindus debating Buddhists.