I noticed that many YouTube atheists claim that Buddhism is "atheist" or an "atheist religion" (sometimes "atheistic"). While terms can, of course, be defined in many different ways, calling Buddhism "atheist" seems to conflict with the usual YouTube definition of atheism: "a lack of belief in a god or gods". Buddhists claim to know that a wide variety of gods do exist. They even worship them! So unless the words "god" or "gods" are used in a subconsciously Christian or Hindu way, most forms of Buddhism can´t be shoe-horned into the atheist category. (I say "most" since there is always a possibility that I missed the latest news from California.) By "god", I here mean a "personal being with superhuman powers, usually conceptualized as good according to the worldview that claims it exists, with which humans attempt to establish some form of relationship". I don´t claim that this definition is exhaustive, but I think most atheists would define "god" in this way. (Theologians might be uneasy about a definition that could perhaps also encompass saints, angels, Roman emperors and the Devil.) Buddhists certainly claim that beings of this type exist.
In Buddhist cosmology, the gods are called "devas", a word derived from the religion later known as Hinduism. The devas are certainly personal beings with superhuman powers, although it´s not entirely obvious whether they live in our reality or somehow reside in a different dimension (or whether it even matters - maybe the question itself is typically "modern"). In mythology, the residence of the gods, known as deva-loka, is situated on Mount Meru, the "world mountain" or axis mundi. There is even a king of the gods, Sakka or Sakra, who is said to be the same god as Indra in the Vedic scriptures. Other gods acknowledged by many Buddhists include Vishnu, Shiva and Ganesha. The devas are worshipped for protection and material boons. They can protect the kingdom, or even Buddhism. In Tibet, some deities are said to be former demons converted to Buddhism! There are goddesses also (the Sanskrit word usually translated "goddess" is "devi").
So far, Buddhism sounds typically polytheist. But there are major differences with, say, most forms of Hinduism. For one, the devas are mortal. While they do live much longer than humans, even the life of a deva eventually ends in death and rebirth as a human. One Buddhist text even says that when Sakka dies, he will be reborn as a particularly wretched human, perhaps as a beggar. Further, the devas are unenlightened (at least most of them). They are not even aware of their mortality, and since life in deva-loka is pure pleasure, devas make no attempt to break free from samsara. Indeed, they cannot do so. All devas were once humans, and became reborn in the god-world after accumulating a vast amount of merit (positive karma). Devas remain devas for as long as this karma lasts. New karma can only be accumulated in the human world, however.
Salvation, or strictly speaking moksha or liberation, can only happen in the human world, through human effort. The Buddha was thus not a deva, but an enlightened human. Liberation can be gained by practicing the methods developed by him, which include meditation and ethical conduct (or what Buddhists deem as such). The goal, nirvana, is usually decribed as ineffable. It´s probably not a world-soul, and definitely nothing connected to any god. Note also that Buddha is a savior figure only in an indirect sense: you have to work out your own salvation, based on his instructions. However, Buddha´s status in much of Buddhism *does* resemble that of a god, if we take god to mean "person with superhuman powers". Buddha was presumably omniescent (for instance, he remembered all his past lives). He was also compassionate and all-loving. According to Buddhist mythology, in a previous life the Buddha had been a rabbit, and when encountering a starving tiger, took such compassion on it that he (i.e. the buddha-rabbit) jumped right into its gaping mouth! And while Buddha wasn´t literally omnipotent, he certainly knew how to escape samsara. After his death and entry into nirvana, the idea soon developed that Buddha´s "merit" still remains on Earth and can be accessed by venerating his relics, which are kept in shrines known as stupas or pagodas. As already pointed out, depending on how you want to define "god", this could actually make even Buddha a god of sorts. It´s certainly similar to the veneration of saints in Catholicism. And if we cut the theology, veneration and worship is the same thing.
In Mahayana Buddhism, there are also beings known as bodhisattvas. These are humans who attained the same status as Buddha, but didn´t enter nirvana, vowing instead to remain in samsara to aid suffering beings. I assume that they do this by teaching Buddha´s message, but it seems bodhisattvas have often taken over functions associated with devas, as well. For instance Kuanyin or Kannon, said to be a female bodhisattva, who also heal disease, protect travelers, and so on. In Pure Land Buddhism, this tendency to conflate bodhisattvas and devas has reached its zenith with Amitabha, said to be a human who vowed to use his accumulated merit when he reached bodhisattvahood to create a "classical" paradise any human can reach simply by repeating Amitabha´s name. Here, we have a form of Buddhism with an almost "monotheistic" savior figure, although (admittedly) he isn´t regarded as an actual creator-god. Very few Buddhist groups seem to believe in a literal creator-buddha, although some talk about "the cosmic buddha Vairochana" in an allegorical sense.
Of course, it´s an interesting question whether an atheist or atheistic religion is at all possible. A materialist religion is certainly possible. The bizarre Raëlians, who worship space aliens as gods, have a materialist metaphysic, everything seemingly supernatural really being a product of alien technology (or illusory). Communism could be seen as a materialist religion, but perhaps the similarities with religion are only superficial. But is a religion without any gods possible? Perhaps it is, if the superhuman powers of the gods are projected onto some at least ostensibly impersonal force, such as History, Technology, the Nation, or what have you. Worldviews of this kind certainly exist. Transhumanism is probably a kind of religion to many of its adherents (speaking of the Raëlians). However, since it´s very difficult to establish a relationship to something impersonal, I wouldn´t be too surprised if such movements soon develop a cultish preoccupation with the next best thing: their own leaders. "You shalt be like gods"...
With that, I end my reflections.
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