Buddhists say they do not believe in God. Yet they pray to Buddhas such as Guru Medicine Buddha. I am a bit confused by this, and I don't think it's very clear. One thing that's very good that Buddhists teach is understanding psychology; or, their method of understanding suffering, and their path to transcending this suffering. They have a good argument against the existence of God, yet I have several reasons for His existence. The Buddhist argument is that if God exists, if He is good and all-powerful, then there would not be suffering. However, there are some things I've read which affirmated pre-existeng ideas I had developed.
Two quotes from a work titled "Stopping and Seeing," originally by Chih-i and translated by Thomas Cleary stuck out for me. The first is "the Buddha is identical to the realm of reality" and the second is that he is identical to the cosmos. Now I just typed the second "identical to the cosmos" into Google to see if I could find a quote from the work; came up with nothing relating to Chih-i, but some other links such as Stoicism or Hinduism. Quite interesting! But I cannot speak of the validity that Buddhist practitioners today will hold for the quote that Buddha is identical to the cosmos, or to the realm of reality; the only authority I base this on is the work by Chih-i translated by T. Cleary.
The other part I saw a little bit ago, was the quote from the Great Flower Ornament Sutra which says that "In each atom of the realms of the universe, there exist vast oceans of world systems." Very interesting indeed! Quite unfathomable.
So, for the moment I will speak simply from these statements. If Buddha is the realm of reality, is the cosmos, then we exist inside Buddha. Now what of Buddha nature? What does all this mean? I will ask this; can one attain buddha-nature if they do not first believe that buddha-nature is inside them? I really believe as much as I can emphasize that this is true. Buddha-nature exists within us; it's entirely graspable. In fact I think that most everyone on this earth has, in lives past, spoken with Manjushri and received teachings from him. That's because, when I speak to people, I can sense that they could be guided toward divine nature, toward buddha-nature, within a number of hours.
You must forgive me! For the last bit of this paragraph was slipping away from an objective point of view and into my opinion. And I did not give you a rock-solid philsophical approach for it. Yet the best and most I can do is try to explain why it is logical, why it is so necessary to believe in God, and so this is what I'm doing; for any perspective which I can attempt to speak to. To say that faith is not, firstly, something illogical or irrational, and second; that it is actually incredibly precious; so much more than useful; it is infinitely precious. Sacred.
So these ideas, that Buddha is the cosmos, and that Buddha-nature exists within us; or that there are oceans of world systems in an atom, they are similar to what is sometimes heard, that God is within us, and that we are within God. Krishna's devotees, for instance, teach that God is situated in the heart of every living entity, as paramatma, the Supersoul. We are all eternally, fragmentally parts of the Supreme. It does not take an illogical step to believe we are part of the whole, does it?
Which leads me to the reason for the creation of this thread. There's an argument which I've been going around, which seems to be very effective-- to me; I haven't gotten so much input from others on it yet...
Basically it's like this. First of all, for this part of the post, I am not using any definition of God-- specifically, not a Supreme Person or an Imersonal Effulgence; neither of these is specificed. God in this argument is the source of existence. Nothing more limiting is said. So one might think of Him in any terms-- whatever terms one already does. Including, Her, for instance. It doesn't matter-- God is the source of reality; and, if you believe reality is causeless, then God is non-existent in this argument. Forgive me for going to these lengths, I merely want to clarify; because this argument should really get someone that is an atheist thinking, if they truly consider it.
Now, the argument is this. Does reality exist? Reality is invisible. It is not this cup, or this tree. If reality were this tree or this cup, then all would have to exist within it; but clearly it does not. Therefore reality is the complete whole, in which exist all physical, mental, spiritual, or other phenomena; anything that exists, exists within reality.
The point of the argument is this question: can you prove to me this reality?? I cannot see any way it is possible to do so. It is taken for granted. It's used by all of us. It is our most common thread. So I am not saying that reality doesn't exists nor am I trying to invalidate it. It does exist, we are all part of it, and converesly, it is part of us. Reality really is greater than anything we can conceive. I can conceive of the universe-- or believe that I can...I can have some conception or think that I do-- but reality is presumably greater because there could be more than the universe.
So now-- here is a new definition for you. God is the source of reality; the source of all that exists. God is, to use a term from our beloved member islandclimber, an underlying reality. God is the higher reality. Just as reality is higher than non-reality. Reality is invisible-- yet we exist in reality, as part of it. In the same way, reality is part of its source. Q.E.D. God exists -- as the definition, the source of reality.
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