Responses to PART TWO

Science and Teachings of the Buddha

Soon to Come – PART THREE

Blaine – this is the topic I’d like to learn! Cosmotology & religion. I was literally "attacked" by a pastor when I told him I believe the big bang actually happened. he never let me go until I said, "God created the universe as it is written in Genesis." so, Buddha's teaching and his points of view of the universe is an eye-opener to me.

Jonny J – My issue with the "God created the Universe" statement was that I need tangible proof ....hasn't happened to this day  The beauty of Buddhism is the complete lack of any "behind the curtains" hocus-pocus that a number of religions require you to accept.

Lunares – Well Jonny Joe, perhaps that issue is because we used to think about God like a person, like a human being. If we think about the Universe as the same God, you can feel that there is no issue like yours. When in the Holy Bible they say that God created human beings as His image and likeness, perhaps should be understood as beings able to feel, to love, to give away love, to share, to help, to feel the life and the universe. As Dana says many times, we are the own force of the Universe.

From Dana – Right on, Jonny Joe!!! That's indeed "the message." Shakyamuni didn't ask one to "accept" anything, he asked only for “awareness and awakening.” He didn’t teach “Buddhism” nor that one should become a “Buddhist.” Even in the Lotus Sutra, his message is not to blindly "accept" the teachings.

  Those who wrote the sutra some time after his death derived their view of what he actually taught while living, contained in earlier texts, and tell it they did with a grand, poetic flourish. The writers of the Lotus Sutra were motivated because "followers" at the time weren't getting the message – they were cloistered in monasteries and fighting among themselves (sound familiar?). The Lotus Sutra came on the scene to get to the heart of the Buddha's teachings—teachings which would lead to self-liberation, compassion, reach a point in this lifetime for one to "make one's self the light" and to practice what they've learned in the real world during this lifetime, not the next.

  A good example of "following the Buddha" – note, not "accepting" or worshiping him – is expressed in the ch. 3 Parable (of the burning house). Following the Buddha  is "to awaken to the Law" [Law of the Void, the one reality—“the Law doesn’t exist in the Law”], receive it in faith, diligently practice, and zealously advance, seeking the complete wisdom, the wisdom of the Buddha, the natural wisdom, the wisdom without a teacher, and the knowledge, powers, and fearlessness of the Buddha, become one who comforts innumerable livings beings. These shall have the Great Vehicle. It is like those children who come out of the burning house to play with the Great Bullock Cart."

  Final note – if those who say “I believe in God” with all its religious trappings brings them “out of the burning house to play with the Great Bullock Cart,” and they live their lives to prove its worth, so be it. I simply don’t see a “God” or other-worldly entity as participant in this life, nor as creator of anything, Awareness of the teachings of the Buddha and trying to live them every moment of my life brings me far greater happiness and has for some time, as well as a sense of the wonders of life, how to live it, and a sense of how we came to be (thanks to a link with scientific thought today). More importantly, this awareness does not separate me from others – it rather links me more firmly with them.

And certainly this includes all those who do not “follow the teachings of the Buddha.” Such awareness of life’s wonders reaches me often from many friends who never even heard of “Buddhism” and who know little or nothing of the Buddha’s teachings – or do they? – giving it “other names.” I learn a great deal about life and how to live it from them, and from how they live their lives.