> If Buddhism honors no god, then where did the Buddha come from? > Mom and Dad Buddha? > R.G.
---That's the right question to be asking, but rather, where did you come from, also, when and which god solved suffering, disease, pain, conflict and fear and death. Which Deva dissolves these issues? These are the right questions to be pondering. That is how Buddha came to be, not by worshipping gods. But by questioning their aims, motives, actuality in reality rather than just thinking God this God that. Nobody can surely know any of that, and if they do, nobody can really know that either. The real question is how can one worship a Deva and be enlightened ...and not be a Buddha?! Not where or who God is. If one is enlightened then they have become a Buddha. If Maharishi was enlightened then Maharishi was a Buddha. Not the other way around. the human intellect and cognition can only fathom so much and then the mind stops. This is called state of Buddhahood, when cognition and knowledge have reached their end. Nirvana. Yoga Citta Vritti Nirodaha. Buddha said pondering God questions is like being shot by an arrow and worrying who shot you and why. What is not needed is an answer, but a cure for the arrow wound. Pondering who and why and what is not going to cure the arrow wound. What Buddha said was there is a cure. Then he outlined it in his 4 Noble Truths. They are hard to beat as far as meaning goes, also Buddha's answers are more humanitarian than otherworldly systems. Since his system is grounded in the solid state of direct perception and questioning, and worrying little about issues of faith, hope and so on. For most people they cannot simply just live with themselves. Instead they must make up all kinds of high falutin secret societies with hierarchies and unobtainable goals to keep the mind ever engaged in ever more discursive ratiocination. As if by broadening the net of the mind one can someday hold the sky. No. Mind cannot hold anything. Let the mind go and become a Buddha. Otherwise you are just rebirthing the continuum of mind over and over, thus reifying samskara. But because different people have different tendencies and aims there are many Buddhisms. Not just one. Thus I am a Buddhist who practices secret mantra yoga. I am a Buddhist who lives in the world amongst everyone else hiding in plain sight. Since Buddhism deals with finalizing ones solution to lifes problems it is said to be the end all of religions. Some Buddhists know the various devas and energies, others don't. This isn't really the point. The point is does the mind feel satisfied and does it then open to direct vision. That is a Buddha then. Not anything else.
