Do Convert Buddhists Need God?

I found this post interesting, in part because of its provocative title. Which I rephrased above as a question.

From the blog:

When I write that people need God/no God, what I mean is that they should be asking themselves what they are overlooking by rejecting a particular perspective on life, by dismissing a particular orientation to existence. What can't they see or feel or understand because the narrative of life, the universe, and everything that they have embraced and which is bound up in their sense of identity, is closed to certain points of view?

I myself have gravitated between God and no God, including "Who cares?" and "What does it have to do with me? The same with religions such as Buddhism and Christianity and philosophical movements such as compassionate or engaged Humanism.

Yesterday, I was part of a team that visited another organization to discuss potential partnerships. Zen center is currently considering moving, and with that has opened up space for other ideas as well, including developing new collaborations. The organization we visited had a focus on spirituality and healing, with what appeared to be a loosely Christian flavor, although they're folks who explore across spiritual/religious borders. After we walked through their building, a former Catholic convent, our executive director commented on how she was pondering the differences between a Zen aesthetic and a more Christian one. Eventually, one of their folks brought this comment back up and corrected the "Christian" attribution, but I think what was happening there was more about this God/no God issue. And how spaces look and feel based on which side of the fence those who organize them tend to fall on.

During the early days of my blog, I had a lot more heat around these issues. There was within me a "need" for some sort of clear demarcation between theistic religions and Buddhism, for example. Even though I also rejected the fixation on solely rational approaches to the dharma, and what felt like atheistic dogma being applied to our practice.

Something has softened around all of this now. My views haven't changed a whole lot, but the clinging to them is less.

And yet, the wrestling with such issues as "secular Buddhism," or is there a God or not, have been most fruitful for my practice. It's not so much that convert Buddhists "need God," but more that we need to maintain a life of questions. To not give in to the seductive voice of "I know the truth and that's that."

Convert Buddhists Hangin' With God and Other Revelations

God talk. Seems like I'm surrounded by it, no matter where I go. Plenty of it floating around the yoga studio where I take my teacher training. Some of it hangs about in my zen center - sometimes offered just as a gesture of connecting with the dominant cultural paradigm, other times maybe it's something more. And for whatever reason, I've noticed a fair amount of it on Buddhist flavored blogs lately.

There was a time when this used to bother me. A lot. I was tired of hearing Bible quotes. Tired of hearing people putting all their faith and energy into a grand deity that may or may not exist. And - if I'm really honest - I was tired of feeling marginalized, ignored, and even held with contempt for not going along with such stories.

Most of that, for whatever reason, has passed on. Finding myself in the middle of a conversation filled with God talk doesn't phase me much. I don't feel the need to identify or not identify with it. I can say what I think on a given day (it changes you know) and let it be. Or say nothing. Or pose some questions. Or just agree with statements like "God is great," knowing that our conceptions of all that are probably entirely different.

But then there's this issue, from Barbara's current post:

I was a bit dismayed by this bit of dialogue I found at Huffington Post

"Once, when I was on a live radio show being interviewed by a Christian talk show host, her first question to me was, "Do you Buddhists believe in God?"

I had only a few seconds to think of an answer.

"Yes," I said.

"Good!" the host said. "And how do you pray?"

I said that we prayed in silence to reach our divine nature.

"I like that!" the host said."

The author, Lewis Richmond, said he wanted to establish common ground with the audience, and I appreciate that. Even so, I think it was a dreadfully unskillful answer. No matter what Richmond means by "God," his "yes" conveyed something to a western Christian audience that is not true.

After a discussion about dating with a fellow yoga teacher student last night, I had a bit of a realization: I still sometimes am too identified with notions around relationships. In other words, I place too much emphasis on either "being single" or "being coupled" - believing, somehow, that one or the other (which one it is changes) is a core identity. Some "thing" that "I" view as "myself."

For people who grew up in Judeo-Christian dominant nations, and/or spent significant parts of their lives as members of one of those religious traditions, it's pretty easy to maintain a certain allegiance with God. Or even identify yourself with God, while still practicing Zen, or any other form of Buddhism.

And, as Barbara's post goes on to point out, there are others who push in the opposite direction, maintaining that one must absolutely have an atheist stance. That because Buddhist teachings deconstruct and dismantle notions of God, we must reject anything remotely sounding like a great divine power out of hand.

Debates about whether there is a God or not were something Buddha put off to the side. Being wise enough to realize that such debates are probably never ending, he sought to point people in the direction of liberation from suffering instead.

And yet, the debates role on, and people go on identifying themselves as atheists, or theists, or agnostics, or whatever. Which seems no different to me than the fussing I do over "being single" or "being coupled." Talking about either is just fine, but when that talk becomes about fixing who I am in this world, then trouble is right behind.

We have a couple of hospital chaplains amongst our Zen sangha. And they often speak about having to offer services and support for the mostly Christian families and patients they're working with. It's been interesting for me to hear both of them talk about letting go of the language and teachings of their Zen practice, and speaking to their patients and their patient's families in the spiritual tongue and forms that they know and love. I don't get the sense that either person has suddenly decided they believe in a God, or identify their lives with God; it's more that they offer up themselves for the others' benefit.

You might think of it as a kind of "identity bardo," which I think is actually a major aim of our practice.

However, it's much easier to just choose a view (I believe in God or I don't believe in God) and then defend the crap out of it. Makes it feel like there's some ground upon which to stand. Some place to call home.

But "home" itself, as we tend to know it, is also just another story we tell.

Science and Religion Wars

Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch broke through the bigotry wall many in his party have built over the past few months by saying the following about the controversial New York Muslim community center project:

Let’s be honest about it, in the First Amendment, religious freedom, religious expression, that really express matters to the Constitution. So, if the Muslims own that property, that private property, and they want to build a mosque there, they should have the right to do so. The only question is are they being insensitive to those who suffered the loss of loved ones? We know there are Muslims killed on 9/11 too and we know it’s a great religion. … But as far as their right to build that mosque, they have that right.

I just think what’s made this country great is we have religious freedom. That’s not the only thing, but it’s one of the most important things in the Constitution. […]

Can't say I have ever supported much of what the Senator has stood for over the years. But clearly on this issue, he understands that's it better to reach out to your neighbors than condemn them as enemies.

Somehow, that message seems to be lacking in the debate over physicist Stephen Hawking's new book, in which he claims that a creator God had no role in creation of the universe. I can imagine there's a lot more going on in the book than that, but a fair number of religious leaders are apparently pretty pissed at Hawking, running around making public statements denouncing Hawking's book and views. And Hawking hasn't exactly been innocent himself, making statements like the following a few months ago:

"There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works."

Talking about winning and loosing is just as ridiculous as seeing heads of religious institutions flipping out over the comments of a single scientist who may be influential, but certainly isn't THE definitive leader, even in his own field.

The battle over Hawking's book, as well as over the Cordoba House project in New York, are both dramas of insecurity, and the enemy making that comes from it.

Science and religion are not enemies. Christians, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and atheists are not enemies. Republicans, Democrats, and the rest of us are not enemies.

It's all in our heads - how so and so is an enemy. The more of us that learn this, and act from this learning, the better.