Saturday, October 09, 2010
God and Buddhism
For the last year, I have been finding comfort listening to a Buddhist podcast. It has helped me by allowing me to think about the meaning of things and reflect on my life and how I live it. With this comfort, there has also come some conflict, particularly with the question about god.
I do not know where god fits into Buddhism but I do not think there is a place for an all powerful creator. My perspective of Buddhism is that the ultimate is liberation not god. This seems to me to be in direct conflict with what I learned in the Episcopal Church that: You shall have no other gods before me. What the Episcopal Church seems to be saying to me is that god is the ultimate and I need to look only to god for liberation.
What draws me to Buddhist thought is the idea of looking within. I want to believe that Christ is within all of us, we just need to keep searching.
I do not know where god fits into Buddhism but I do not think there is a place for an all powerful creator. My perspective of Buddhism is that the ultimate is liberation not god. This seems to me to be in direct conflict with what I learned in the Episcopal Church that: You shall have no other gods before me. What the Episcopal Church seems to be saying to me is that god is the ultimate and I need to look only to god for liberation.
What draws me to Buddhist thought is the idea of looking within. I want to believe that Christ is within all of us, we just need to keep searching.
