The quote extracted below comes from a real
Buddhist, The Arahat:
Daniel M. Ingram
THE GOD MODELS
On a very different tangent, we have the God Models. While
Buddhism pretends to be an exception to the theological
traditions,
many Buddhists essentially worship the Buddha as a God just
as
Christians worship Jesus as a God. Further, the vast majority of
the
traditions that promote awakening involve some sort of
theological
background or underpinning, including Hindu Vedanta’s focus on
the
divine nature of things, Islam’s Sufi’s focusing on The Friend
or
dissolving in Allah, and Christianity’s various dissolution in
God
metaphors, such as the Divine Marriage. Buddhism has the same
problem at times with the phrase Buddha Nature. These are
interesting
models to talk about, and basically the question comes down to
the
distance between “God” and one’s life. Those who believe in a God
that
is a separate entity are already in trouble. Those who believe this
entity
is far off in Heaven or largely unavailable are really in trouble.
However,
those who believe in a “God” that is right here, right now, and
present in
all things, including themselves, have a fighting chance, and this
is as
practical a model for awakening as any other, if done correctly,
which it
almost never is.
The problem comes for those who believe in God Free Zones,
that
is, those places where God is not. These tend to be people who
believe
in a limited, abstract God. Most people who believe in God have
not
taken the time to consider the question of whether or not they
believe in
God Free Zones or a limited God. In fact, most people who believe
in
God in the monotheistic sense would be offended by the notion
that
their God was somehow limited. However, if you question them
about
whether or not God is in their toilet paper or in a rock, or
perhaps
more specifically IS the toilet paper, and is the rock, is their
weird
popcorn fetish, is the annoying itch in their armpit, and actually
is
everything else, even most people who in theory believe in an
omnipresent, unlimited, all-powerful God won’t go that far. This is
too
bad, because if they did, they would have a good working model
for
realizing that THIS IS IT, and so we are back to my original,
simple,
excellent premise and test for good models of awakening.
Here’s how this works: if you believe that you are trying to see
God,
and you believe that all creation is a manifestation not just
created by
God, but in fact IS GOD, they you are back to basic insight
practices:
seeing the sensate world exactly as it is, because there you will
find
ultimate reality, or “God”, if you want to call it that. When the
center
point is seen through by your careful investigation of all
these
sensations, or all the aspects of God, then all that is left is
just all these
sensations as before, that is, all this God. Thus, if one is
willing to really
believe in a omnipresent God, then by truly, deeply, directly
perceiving
all sensations to be just part of the causal, natural unfolding of
what they
label God, all the boundaries between what were self and other can
be
seen through, and the phenomenal world is left doing its thing,
thus the
practitioner realizes they always were part of God, in a sense,
though
these designations are merely terminological one way or the
other.
Thus, the problem with God models typically is that people
don’t
take them far enough, because if they do they can get into
something
really good, though they could get their just as easily without
them. All
the other ideals that are involved in becoming God or seeing God
are
just more odd dreams and possible side effects of spiritual
practice. I
have a few friends who saw visions while on LSD in which “God”
told
them useful stuff, and this is fine, but this is back in the realm
of the
powers and has nothing to do with awakening and only a very
limited
amount to do with “God” in the ultimate sense.
