Defining the Spiritual Situation, 2

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

So, we hae a continuum of understanding of God from "No God" on one side to "God" on the other with a thousand shades of gray in between. Each shade presents its own unique hue, its own understanding of the role of the "believer" and the "clergy." Each contains its own "domain assumptions."

Manuel argues that we Buddhists are above and beyond a notion of God. This might be one side of the continuum. Understanding the issue, of course, from the subject's point of view. Do I want to even acknowledge the possibility of an object, subject asks? The Buddha himself seemed to want to avoid these discussions because he felt they were not useful to the goal of the Buddha Way.They are of the sort that philosophers often get to: how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

Yet, my commentary is not so metaphysical. It is quite practical.

Our understanding of the universe guides us. Our willingness to drop away self and be enfolded by all is an important ingredient to our daily practice. The idea of God is clearly a human invention, and in primitive cultures this idea was anthropomorphised so that we could either better understand our conception of God or control him through supplication.

Some have argued that God is none other than a reflection of ourselves and so has evolved as have we through the centuries. No doubt this is true. And if true, where are we today?

To dismiss God dismisses entire cultures and their very powerful beliefs. Dismissing this means not understanding those cultures and such a lack of understanding can be deadly, especially in the contempory climate. Jihad is, afterall, a "holy war."

None of my discussion was intended to argue for or against a personal belief or point of view, only that we use a frame of reference within which we might understand how various peoples use God or a notion of God in their lives. Even atheists have a God they rail against, otherwise they would be mute. Often their understanding of such a God is of the Judeo-Christian variety, often punitive and primitive in conception. Such a notion becomes a straw man in an argument and suggests a simplistic examination of the whole thing.

God, however, is a universal phenomenon, not constrained by the human mind, not created in the human mind. God as the universe, the intricate processes, the outside and the inside, the very fabric of existence, is hardly an anthropomorphism. We in Zen might understand God as shunyata itself. Or not.

Be well.