[viepedorlella]

Oh yes, you are right. I think that many people see the connectedness of things and whatever and call it God. They personify phenomena. To me, this doesn't matter very much. We call rain clouds "Cumulonimbus" but the Souix tribe may have called them the rain spirit. The words express different things, but both terms have the same result.

Many years ago, a friend of mine visiting from Taiwan asked me why was it, of all the United States presidents, that Abraham Lincoln was the only one to which people had built a temple. At first I wasn't sure what he meant. He was referring to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. which, if you've grown up in a country full of Buddhist and Taoist temples, looks like a big temple. Also, people put flowers there, make 'pilgrimages' to it, go there for inspiration and sometimes talk to the giant seated Lincoln. So, in fact, he was right.

People who do not study Buddhist teachings will probably not understand the Buddhist concept of 'no self' and so they might call 'ultimate reality' God, but that doesn't make it a bad term.

It is not the rug's fault if somebody walks on it with muddy shoes.