The Buddhist view of God
The Buddhist view of God
“Turning the impossible into possible”
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The Buddhist view of God
The use of the word “God” is so varied and so ambiguous that it is impossible to explain the Buddhist approach to God without first clarifying the meaning of this ambiguous concept.
The Oxford Dictionary defines the meaning of the word ‘God’ in a theistic context as follows: “A supernatural being. The creator and ruler of the universe.” In another theistic context, the following description is given: “There is one true God, eternal, without body, parts, desires or passions; of infinite power, wisdom and benevolence. The creator and preserver of all things visible and invisible…” The rest of the text details the specific characteristics of this theistic school, and this is not relevant to our discussion.
This general description can be taken as defining the conceptual idea of the existential God, prevalent in monotheistic beliefs and with it the idea of belief in the power of creation that varies from one theistic tradition to another.
According to one tradition, God’s creation began with the sub-existence of chaotic matter and the creation of an ordered universe out of chaos. According to another tradition, the matter from which existence is created is part of the divine being, (srsti) while according to another tradition, God creates matter out of nothing (ex nihilo).
When the word ‘God’ is used in the sense described so far of an essential creator, who is supreme, sovereign, of unlimited power and knowledge, omnipotent, and infinite in goodness. To the question ‘Does God exist?’ there are four possible answers:
(1) These are the theists who say ‘yes’ and affirm the existence of God.
(2) These are the atheists who say ‘no’ and deny the existence of God.
(3) These are the agnostics who claim that we cannot know whether or not God exists.
(4) These are the positivists who claim that the question is meaningless because the concept of ‘God’ is not clear enough.
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Holistic Therapies:
Holistic Therapies: Many detox programs incorporate holistic therapies such as mindfulness, yoga, and meditation to help individuals cope with stress and anxiety during the detox process. These therapies support the mind-body connection and contribute to overall recovery.
Tapering Process
Tapering Process: Drugs detox often involves a gradual tapering of the drug to reduce withdrawal severity. Doctors will slowly decrease the dosage over time to allow the body to adjust to lower levels of the substance.
Psychological Support:
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Post-Detox Treatment:
Post-Detox Treatment: After completing detox, continuing treatment is crucial to prevent relapse. This often includes participation in ongoing therapy, group support, and the development of new coping strategies to maintain sobriety.
Atheism
What is the Buddhist’s answer to this question? Was the Buddha a theist, an atheist, an agnostic, or a positivist? The answer is absolutely clear. According to the definitions we have given here of the concept of ‘God’ in its common sense, the Buddha is an atheist and Buddhism in general, including the Theravada school1 and the Mahayana school2, are forms of atheism.
A number of Western scholars have tried to claim that the Mahayana school was created at the beginning of the Christian era and in it the Buddha is defined as a god. Both of these claims are completely false. The Mahayana school probably originated at the Mahāsaṇghika Council when a group of liberal monks rebelled against the traditional conservative approach of the Theravadas a century after the death of the Buddha, and in neither school of Mahayana is the Buddha considered a creator god.
However, this does not mean that the Buddha was merely human, not according to Theravada or Mahayana. Although some local Buddhist schools followed the rationalists of the 19th century, according to early Buddhist writings, when the Buddha was asked if he was a human being, he replied that he was not a human being but a Buddha. Yet he was a human being who became a Buddha. The Buddha, known as the Tathagata3 or the ‘Transcendent’, is “profound, immeasurable and incomprehensible”. His body passed away at death, and he became invisible to celestial beings and humans, so it is not correct to say that he ceased to exist.
Rejecting the idea that the universe is the product of the creation of a existent god, who creates it and causes it to end at some point in time, Buddhism is a form of atheism.
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Theism of Makhali Gosala
The fact that Buddhism is atheistic is also clear from the denunciation of theistic religion and philosophy by Makhali Gosala4 – one of the six great thinkers of the Buddha’s generation, who created and led the prototypes of religions and philosophies that are widespread throughout the world today. Makhali was a theist or issara-karana-vadin, that is, a believer in the cause of everything being God. The others held different views: materialist, agnostic, categorical, determinist, eclectic.
According to the Jain Bohagavati Sutra and the accompanying commentaries of the Digha Nikāya, Makhali is called ‘Gosala’ because he was born in a cowshed. In his teachings, he rejects the existence of any moral agent in the world and claims that a person becomes corrupt or doomed or becomes purified and attains liberation according to the good will of God. Human beings are free from impulses or will and their future is determined and planned according to the will of the Creator. All living beings evolve in different states of existence under the influence of fate, circumstances or nature. Ultimately, the foolish and the wise are equal – both will complete the samsara evolution and attain liberation and the end of suffering. This theory is called the ‘doctrine of liberation through samsara development’ (saṃsāra-suddhi). In one Buddhist scripture it is described as follows: “There is no shortcut to heaven; one must wait and await the vicissitudes of fate.” Whether a person experiences suffering or happiness is his fate. “All living beings will attain liberation through samsara development, so do not be anxious about what is to come” (J. VI. 229). The same idea is expressed in a theistic scripture: “Living beings originate in the unmanifest, the unmanifest, they develop in the manifest, and find their final rest in the unmanifest, the unmanifest, so why worry.”
Makhali explicitly states: “The question of whether a person reaches the spiritual maturity of good deeds, commitment, religiosity, spiritual life or monastic life does not exist” (D.I. 54). Man is a mere product of creation – his future and the will of God are beyond his reach. Makhali presents an analogy to illustrate: “As a ball of wool rolls and unravels itself until it is completely unraveled, so in the same way the wise and the foolish evolve through samsara and ultimately attain liberation.”
This theism of Makhali has several attractive features – first, it is logically consistent. Many philosophers have shown that the central attributes of God – omnipotence and omniscience – create a picture of a deterministic universe. The omniscient God sees the future in all its various aspects and details, in contrast to man who can only speculate. The future of all beings is completely fixed and God can see it as if it were a reel of film. Almighty God is fully responsible for all the actions of all creatures and hence the belief in the free will of God’s creatures is only illusory. Second, God is impartial and objective in his treatment of all creatures equally, as Machiavelli puts it: “There is no superior and no inferior”, since all pass through a similar path of development in different states of existence.
Another point made in this theory is that there is no eternal hell of any kind – creatures do not burn in some kind of eternal hell-fire because all ultimately attain liberation. There are three hundred hells or places of purification and atonement in addition to the seven human worlds and several paradises to pass through before attaining final liberation.
This theism frees humans from all burden of responsibility, giving them security, comfort and enjoyment in paradise (mixed with the suffering of hell) before the promise of liberation. In this sense, this theism can be compared with many modern forms of theism that attempt to give equal opportunities to all and justify an eternal hell.
The puppet argument
With all that said, the theism of Makhali was severely criticized by the Buddha because it gave people a false sense of security, encouraged complacency, and eliminated free will and the value of human effort. The Buddha says that a person like Makhali causes great harm and harms a large number of people. The Buddha compares him to a fisherman who casts his net in the mouth of a river and kills a large number of fish. Similarly, in the Sandaka Sutta, the Buddha says that in the world there are four archetypes of false religions and four archetypes of inadequate religions, which, however, are not necessarily completely false. He distinguishes Buddhism from these eight archetypes. Two of these archetypes that he condemns as false are attributed to forms of theism. One is the doctrine that salvation is not dependent on any human effort or moral causation influenced by good or bad actions and deeds, but that humans are miraculously saved or damned, the cause of which is claimed to be the will of God. The fourth archetype is the doctrine of theistic evolution, in which fate is deterministic.
It is interesting to note the reasons given against various forms of theism. There are two main arguments against theism presented in the canonical writings. The first of these is called the “Marionette Argument” and is described as follows: “If God designed all life in the world—glory and sorrow, good and bad actions, man is but material in the hands of the Creator—an instrument controlled by God’s will and God alone is responsible for all.”
Theists who do not accept the position of predestination (which is logically consistent) try to evade this conclusion by saying that God gave man free will. But it can be shown that the concept of divine providence is incompatible with the distinction between free will and human liberty. To be consistent we must either give up belief in theism or belief in free will or admit and confess that it is a mystery beyond our understanding, and devoid of any rational justification.
Professor Antony Flew, who has conducted an in-depth study of the concept of theism, and included arguments for and against theism, presents his conclusions in the context of our case as follows: “The picture of a sovereign father showing tolerance towards his rebellious children: he has given us, as it were, our freedom, and we – poor, worthless creatures – have too often taken advantage of the situation to rebel against his will. If this picture of the situation were appropriate, we would have no problem. It goes without saying that children can act against the will of their parents, and it is also possible for parents to grant their children freedom that is abused, while refraining from using the means of control at their disposal. But the case of a Creator and creatures is quite different. Here the appropriate figures, insofar as any correspondence of figures can be considered, would be that of the Creator: either as a sovereign puppeteer with creatures whose every thought or movement is controlled by him, or as a great hypnotist with subjects who always acting on his suggestions. Which makes the first character completely incompetent and the other two characters much less than the importance attributed to God, not as a producer-creator or parent who can make and grow his product and then let it simply be, but as Creator. This means that nothing happens according to his absolute determinism and with the help of his ontological support and agreement. Everything means everything, and this includes every human thought, every human action and every human choice. Since we, humans, are inevitably part of the universe, we are included in ‘all things visible and invisible’ of which God is supposed to be the ‘creator and preserver’.
His final conclusion is the one I mentioned earlier – in his words: “Hence, as we argued before, it would be completely inconsistent to hold that there is both a Creator and other truly autonomous beings besides him.” (Ibid. p.54). A careful study of theistic scriptures of various traditions will show that this claim is generally directly confirmed, despite contradictions elsewhere.
According to the Buddhist theory of causality, human actions are not deterministic in the conventional sense. The Buddhist theory abhors and distances itself from both natural and theistic determinism on the one hand and total indeterminism on the other. Man has an element of free will even though his actions are conditioned but not determined by any internal or external factor. By exercising this freedom in a good and right way, man can change his state from a state of anxiety, craving, restlessness, and suffering to a state of peace of mind and happiness. This is not the product or effect of any divine will but rather by human effort and understanding of human psychology. In the Devadaha Sutta, the Buddha uses the arguments of theists against them by saying that if theists suffer, psychologically, then according to their theory the cause of this must be God, who has withheld his grace from them, whereas in this case (if theism were true) “it must have been created by a good God.”
The argument of evil
The second argument against theism is found in the canonical writings as the argument for evil. This argument is based on the assumption that if the world was created by a (good) God, there are forms of evil that cannot be explained. There are several arguments, but they basically go like this: “If God is the Lord of the whole world and the creator of all the variety of beings, (a) what is the explanation for the existence of injustice, deceit and fraud, lies and distortions of reality, arrogance and illusions. Or (b) that God is evil in the sense that he created injustice when he could have created justice.”
Here too, modern philosophers confirm the argument after showing that all attempts to evade explaining evil are inadequate. It is not acceptable to say that evil is the negative or, alternatively, unreal, unreal, since suffering, ignorance, poverty, ugliness are real and real just as their opposites.
It is also unacceptable to say that evil (such as malicious harm) is necessary for the existence of a higher good (such as forgiveness or pardon) because there are still many instances of evil that cannot be explained in this way. It would be incorrect to say that evil in the world is a consequence of granting free will to humans (and this is without considering the problem with the existence of a sovereign God, as mentioned earlier). Professor Flew puts it this way: “There are many evils that cannot be explained in this way: the suffering of animals, for example, especially that which occurred before the time of man or will occur after the time of man.” Again, the inability to give a rational explanation of the situation leads theists to admit that it is a mystery: “The origin of moral evil lies forever hidden with the mystery of human freedom.”
Thus, there is the mystery or contradiction of a heavenly presence (God) with human freedom, and likewise, the mystery of the contradiction between belief in heavenly goodness and the existence of a certain evil.
From these two arguments of the Buddhists against theism, it can be seen that while some of the Upanishads9 hold the view that “the world is surrounded by God,”10 Buddhism says that “the world is without a guardian and without a master.”
Psychological Support:
Psychological Support: Like any addiction recovery process, detox from Subutex includes psychological support. This can involve counseling, therapy, or support groups to address the mental and emotional aspects of addiction.
Other arguments
I have mentioned so far only the two main arguments found in the canonical writings and which can be attributed to the Buddha himself. But the later literature, both Theravada and Mahayana, offers a wealth of other arguments against the idea of a ‘creating God’ (Isvara), and alongside them arguments for atheism and its truth. Besides these, there are other arguments which show the fallacy of the theistic arguments for the existence of God.
If we take the theistic argument in the modern context, for example, we find that the ontological argument was a mere definition which mistakenly considers existence as an attribute. The cosmological argument contradicts its own premise by speaking of a non-causal cause or by using the word ’cause’ in a meaningless sense.
Yet the creation argument seems so superficial and meaningless in the face of the waste, cruelty, and relentless murder that exist in evolution and nature. It is hard to imagine that a ‘loving God’ could have created and watched the “spectacular spectacle” of dinosaurs tearing each other to pieces for millions of years.
Improbable or meaningless?
To reconcile the apparent contradiction of divine love with the observed cruelty of nature, theists respond by claiming that the nature of God’s love is unfathomable, which is another mystery. A human parent would do everything in their power to alleviate the suffering of their child. Would an omnipotent and omniscient being observe what is happening without any intervention? To say that such a being exists is to equate its love with indifference or cruelty. In such a case, it is impossible to know what meaning to attach to the concept of ‘love’ as an attribute attributed to God. This has led many theists to say that reference to God or to God’s attributes, as they are, is incomprehensible or incomprehensible (hence the expression ‘the mysterious ways of God’).
Bodhicarya-vatara12 brings this argument to an absurd contradiction by claiming that in this case the concept of God or Creator is meaningless: “If, as theists say, God is too great and wonderful for human comprehension, then his attributes are also beyond our ability to conceive. So that we do not know him or can attribute to him the attribute of Creator.” It follows that in the ordinary sense given to the words ‘omnipotent, omniscient and infinitely good’ (or any conceptual meaning analogous to them), the evidence points against the existence of God and in the event that this is not accepted, the concept and the concept become meaningless.
