(Serene Mind) The truth behind Buddhism | Why [some] Buddhists don't believe in God, many do, and others understand that it doesn't much matter in terms of one's awakening, liberation, and freedom.
Buddhism is nontheistic (not agnostic, not confirmed atheistic) and don't believe in some supreme ultimate creator God but can and do if they want to.
Theism and atheism both have very goods point and some reality to them. Pantheism and polytheism are closer to the truth.
There are no monotheists just henotheists, but they don't know it or don't want to admit it because they're afraid to question their own religion's beliefs. Parents said, priests said, Bible interpreters (and mistranslators) said...so we just believe them.
Many, probably most, Buddhists do believe in all kinds of gods (devas) and Gods (brahmas) and even GOD (Brahman, the Monad, the ONE), as well as many kinds of unseen beings. But are any of these invisible entities an ultimate creator of souls, bodies, realities, controlling everything that happens? No way, even though Jehovah (Yahweh), the Demiurge (Yaldabaoth), Allah, Ahura Mazda, YHWH, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, and countless other "supreme beings" will say so or have priests say so for them.
There is Maha Brahma (the "Great Supremo") in Buddhism and the great Sakka (Indra), King of the Devas, and countless light beings (devas, lit. "shining ones") on many of the 31 Planes of Existence.
There is not just this world but worlds -- countless worlds -- to come in samsara. Rebirth is very real and has been since time immemorial but not often understood because most people are convinced it has to be some kind of "eternal soul" passing through all kinds of incarnations. It may seem that way, but ultimately it is not that way. Conventionally, yes. Many religions have good general descriptions even with culturally varying details.
So sacred texts and religious ideas can and sometimes are superior to answers science feeds us, as the Religion of the White Lab Coats claim to have irrefutable, testable, repeatable proof ("objective" unchanging evidence), mathematical formulas, cold logic, and views that later crumble. They always crumble. Science is incapable of coming to certainty about anything. There are no fixed conclusions. Everything needs more research and more scientists getting paid to work on things.
Science can't even agree on a definition of itself or its method. We are told to call it the "scientific method," but that changes and is applied differently everywhere, from lab to lab, university to university, city to city, state to state, country to country, and likely planet to planet.
Scientists, like religious priests in their flowing robes, tell us what is okay to believe, what we are given permission to believe without being laughed at -- no matter what is actually true or untrue.
We think "scientists" are unanimous. They are not! Not even within a single department of a single university. We think scientists hold to one worldview. They do not.
In this country, most scientists are at least nominally "Christian" or members of some other Abrahamic faith. Why? If science were so sure about anything, at least it could be sure that creationists, intelligent design advocates, and fearmongers are out-and-out wrong.
But no, to play it safe, they align with one religion or another, almost always the one they were born into.
Way to go, science, what an inspiration and model for our reasoning and personal behavior.
We say, forget religion and science. But that can't easily be done, can it? So listen. Question. Think. Follow your heart and intuition and reason and the advice of noble friends and teachers. But to do this it is almost certainly going to mean we have to go check for ourselves what that advice is or has been in the past. We can't accept the words of well-meaning intermediaries, to say nothing of the ones who do not mean us well.
Accept what agrees with experience and understanding, like the Kalama Sutta suggests, but read it to the end. The Buddha does not stop at, "There is nothing to believe." He very much gives things that can be believed from our own personal experience and builds from there.
Unless we're enlightened, we ought never think we know for sure. After all, history shows, we humans are easily misled, too easily deceived, and sadly are also very much at risk of self-deception.
So purify the mind and heart, then systematically be mindful with it, then see for yourself if what the Buddha and the noble ones said was true isn't exactly as they said. That is our advice.
Because each person is responsible for one's own karma (deeds of thought, speech, and body that have the power to produce welcome and unwelcome results in the future), it is for each person to decide what to believe. Use it. Remain open. Truth is not arrived at by words but by practice and direct-seeing that produces insight.
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