[Buddha-l] "God" and Buddhism

[Curt Steinmetz]

The full title of Anagarika Dharmapala's treatise is actually:

Namo tassa Bhagavato Arshato Sammasam Buddhassa.

ADORATION TO THE BLESSED, SINLESS, EXALTED ALL KNOWING BUDDHA.

The Arya Dharma of

Sakya Muni, Gautama Buddha.

OR

The Ethics of Self Discipline.

See it in all it's glory here:
http://arfalpha.com/SelfDiscipline/SelfDiscipline.htm

Curt

Bruce Burrill wrote:
> Brad W is a bit of a doofus; an interesting doofus, but a doofus 
> nonetheless: "But there is this sense that there's an underlying 
> ground to the universe, and that ... that we all partake in it and 
> we're all  manifestations of that and that this underlying ground is 
> not just dead matter, it's something alive. So in that sense I think 
> it is not atheism. My teacher would always say, 'God is the Universe, 
> and the Universe is God.'" That is good Hinduism as far it goes, but 
> really is not very meaningful. It is vaguely vacuous, but then that 
> is about as good as it gets for god.
>
>
> .
>
> ...it is equally clear that theism in the sense in which I am using 
> it -- as the assertion of  an omniscient, permanent, independent, 
> unique cause of the cosmos -- is rejected throughout the length  and 
> breadth of the Indian Buddhist tradition. Dharmakiirti's antitheistic 
> arguments may have taken the Buddhist critique to a new level of 
> sophistication, but he had behind him a millennium of refutations, 
> with many of which he undoubtedly was familiar, and which ought to be 
> borne in mind when we consider his discussion.
>
> The Paali Nikaayas contain a number of explicit rejections of theism, 
> and some important implicit ones, as well.
>
> ...
>
> For the later Buddhist philosophical tradition, however, the most 
> important early arguments are perhaps the implicit ones: those many 
> passages in the Nikaayas where the concept of a permanent attaa or 
> aatman is rejected, principally on the grounds that no permanent 
> entity is or can be encountered in experience or justified by reason. 
> It really is Buddhism's emphasis on universal impermanence that is at 
> the root of its aversion to the concept of God, as became evident in 
> the sorts of refutations offered in the post-nikaaya period (when the 
> attributes of the creator, identified by the Buddhists as ii`svara, 
> perhaps had become more clearly defined). --- Dharmakiirti's 
> refutation of theism By Roger Jackson
> Philosophy East and West 36:4 Oct. 1986.
>
> http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/jackson.htm
>    
>
> _______________________________________________
> buddha-l mailing list
> buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com
> http://mailman.swcp.com/mailman/listinfo/buddha-l
>