Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: desire for God

[Llundrub]

I like the Buddhist way of life and the walk the talk approach and other things you mention. But I never could make sense of their idea of no God or no Self.     -----I think it would have to do with empirical evidence as in, show me where they lie.     Belief in Karma, a moral order that has no empirical evidence, implies some God-like principles of fairness and evolution of consciousness - cosmic "purposefulness", not just blind mechanics.   -----There are the chains of dependent origination, the following of the links of which show all to be empty.Ignorance=volition=consciousness=body=senses=contact=feeling=craving=grasping=becoming=birth=death. Ignorance is the root of the constant cycle of birth and death. In fact, ignorance is the creator if there is one. In contrast enlightenment is freedom from ignorance and the chains of dependent arising cease. Ignorance seeks and develops mind which then makes a body to gather contact which has feelings and it gets stuck in joy and sorrow thereby striving for ever more ideal conditions which continue birth and death. When one follows the mechanics and then stops them ignorance ceases as do craving and need for continued samsara.    It's not important if there's a God or not. The same mechanics would apply even if there were.       An Occam's razor approach would dispense with such elaborations.   -----A first cause is certainly harder to fathom than no cause.  A creator who comes from nothing is certainly harder to figure than no creator. The laptop depends on the table which depends on the wood which depends on the people who carved it which depends on carbon based life which depends on earth which depends on the solar system which depends on the sun which depends on the milky way which depends on the universe, which depends on space which depends on quanta, which depends on nothing. At which point is there one thing and only one thing which gave rise and cessation to all other things? Only nothing is a powerful enough support for all things. And since they all trace themselves back to nothing therefore all is uncreated and nothing.  Any Creator also follows the pattern.  Some creators may exist and may have developed over the aeons, but they also follow the pattern of nothing arisen.   The nondualist tantric Buddhism sees no cause, and all as uncreated, can bow to a creator, but does not seek freedom from maya from one, does not diminish any creator like Mahamaya in its own eyes, but seeks no profit from one(as profit today is loss tomorrow), abjures none, accepts all, cuts ignorance at its base and is self liberated all from being unborn right from the very start.   Also I can't understand their distinction between reincarnation and rebirth in the light of the no-self doctrine.     ----If you consider the Unified Field theories, at which point and where does the atma exist?  If there is an atma then it too partakes of the basic nature of vacuum state.   Paradoxically Buddha or Buddha Nature has become deified itself and Buddhist use devotion as "skillful means".   ----As a meditation technique for realizing shunyata, not as a way of seeking benefits from a creator. Sure, some treat Buddha as a God but that's not his fault. Some people also worship animals.     Consequently I'm attracted to Buddhism as a way of life but to the Gita as my guiding philosophy.   -----Tantric Buddhism is confusing because it has all sorts of deities and so people think it reiterates creators and other gods. But actually each Buddhist deity is another way of seeing Buddha. There are a million tantras but each one is merely telling the life story of Buddha Shakyamuni all over again like a purana so that the mind can fathom the essence of Buddha's nirvana in a nutshell. In sutra one reads the canon and it takes time, in tantra the whole canon is summed up in a few essential phrases which become a simple way to cut through the mind with all its incessant tendencies to go here and there.   Finally in tantric Buddhism one seeks to understand Buddha's nirvana without destroying the process that underlies life itself, that is, one doesn't seek to renounce life and go off to a retreat (not forever at any rate). One seeks to renounce nothing at all, but merely experience the shunyata, ie., Unified Field, and bring that clarity to the surface. Once the clarity of the base is seen on the surface one realizes the condition of the golden unborn one, ones own buddhahood.       But perhaps you can disentagle my confusion?   ----Only you can do that ;)     Happy Wesak!!! To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/   To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]   Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.