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Is God a dirty word in Buddhism?
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06-22-2011, 11:25 PM
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payloansday
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God is not a dirty word. But "God" as conceptualized by many people is not a relevant concept within the Buddhadhamma. Nevertheless, there are people who put Dhamma into practice and still have widely varying beliefs and viewpoints about all kinds of things, including God. The reason for this is that beliefs are not the point.
If you examine your beliefs, you may find that you have less control over them than you think you do. Beliefs are not like a switch that you can turn on and off. They emerge from your entire background and your current perceptions. These factors are mostly beyond your control. The beliefs that present themselves at this moment in your field of experience are not-self phenomena. They are not me, they are not really mine, they are subject to change.
With regard to God, in our western world, many people come to the Dhamma from the perspective of a Christian background that includes a strong God orientation. Many people from this background will begin to hear the Dhamma, and it will resonate with them, and they will be ready to hear more. The God belief does not have to get in the way of this process. Other people at a different place on the path, from a different background, might zero in on the God belief and turn that into a point of contention on discussion boards like this. In doing so, those people might fail to recognize the potential nuances within the framework of any God belief, and those people also risk awakening underlying seeds of dogmatism and division, and squashing the opportunity for people to hear the Dhamma.
That is one reason it can be helpful in some situations to use "God" language when discussing the Dhamma, as Ven. Buddhadasa, Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh, S.N. Goenka and many others sometimes do. It's a delicate matter, however, because some people so strongly identify with their particular "God" beliefs, whether they believe in God or not.
It can be helpful to present the various viewpoints about God so people can sort through them in a detached way. But to say that only this belief or that belief about God is correct within the framework of Dhamma is not so helpful, because nuances of belief and personal experience vary too greatly, and in any case, these beliefs that we hold are not the point. The Dhamma is not about formulating a perfect set of beliefs. The Dhamma is about cultivating the wisdom to see any beliefs for what they are.
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