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As the reader may have gathered from the last chapter, the teachings of the Buddha in the sutras are more about a philosophy of how to live life, than a religion that involves deities or supernatural entities. Classic Buddhism is considered a non-theistic religion because it does not promote belief in God as a distinct and discrete being with personal attributes as Western theistic religions view God (Thera, 2004) or as Hindus might do so (Knapp, 2016). When asked about a Supreme Being, the Buddha reportedly either remained silent or discouraged such questions (Jayaram 2016), as when he was asked about the “self.” Ambedkar (1957) reports a conversation between a religious man and the Buddha that addresses this issue. Although the Buddha did not explicitly rule out the existence of God (whom he acknowledges as “the Absolute”) during that conversation, he argued against the notion that either the Absolute or Ishavara (God as understood by Hindus as a person) was the creator. He stated that our deeds are the creator of good or evil, concluding the discussion with this statement:
“Let us, then, surrender the heresies of worshipping Ishavara and praying to him; let us not lose ourselves in vain speculations of profitless subtleties; let us surrender self and all selfishness; and as all things are fixed by causation, let us practice good so that good may result from our actions.”
Gethin (1998, p. 65) also emphasises that Buddhists do not believe in a creator God, as do Williams et al (2012, p. 3) who say: “Buddhists have no objection to the existence of the Hindu gods, although they deny completely the existence of God as spoken of in e.g. orthodox Christianity, understood as the omnipotent, omniscient, all-good, and primordially existent creator deity, who can be thought of as in some sense a person” (a statement repeated by these authors a second time on p. 5). However, since the Buddha only travelled about 200 miles from his home during his lifetime, he may not have been aware of the monotheistic Abrahamic tradition of the Jews. As noted earlier, though, he did have a generally negative view towards the Hindu religion as practiced during his lifetime:
“Many for refuge go to mountains and to forests, to shrines that are groves or trees – humans who are threatened by fear. This is not a refuge secure, this refuge is not the highest. Having come to this refuge, one is not released from all misery.” (Dhammapada 188-189).
The Buddha wanted his followers to avoid the distractions brought on by theological speculations about God or gods, and instead focus on right living and virtuous actions that would lead to the relief of suffering.
While most Buddhists in the Theravada branch do not emphasise deities of any sort, this is not always the case for other Buddhist traditions. For example, when Buddhism spread to various places in the East and mixed with local religions, a number of cultures included a devotional element to Buddhism (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2004). This was especially true for Mahayana Buddhism, but also to some extent for Vajrayana Buddhism. For example, in Mahayana Buddhism there is belief in bodhisattvas or compassionate beings that exist in the highest level of existence and serve to guard the world and come into the world to alleviate suffering. Mahayana Buddhists consider the Buddha to be an embodiment of the “cosmic dharmakaya,” which has been described as “the body of reality itself, without specific, delimited form, wherein the Buddha is identified with the spiritually charged nature of everything that is” (Ray, 2001). The cosmic dharmakaya, then, resembles the notion of God (or at least Brahman in a pantheistic sense as taught in Hinduism).
Some Mahayana Buddhists may honour, pray to, and worship a divine-like being called Avalokitesvara (translated literally “Lord who looks down”). Avalokitesvara is a bodhisattva who embodies mercy, compassion, kindness and love. Despite being able to reach nirvana, Avalokitesvara delays doing so in order to help humans on earth who are suffering (Leighton 1998). Some of these characteristics sound similar to that of God in monotheistic Western religions. Finally, in chapter 25 of the Lotus Sutra (one of the most powerful and influential of all the Mahayana sutras), consider the description of the bodhisattva whose name is “Perceiver of the World’s Sounds” (another name for Avalokitesvara):
“At that time the Bodhisattva Inexhaustible Intent immediately rose from his seat, bared his right shoulder, pressed his palms together and, facing the Buddha, spoke these words: “World Honoured One, this Bodhisattva Perceiver of the World’s Sounds – why is he called Perceiver of the World’s Sound?” The Buddha said to Bodhisattva Inexhaustible Intent: “Good man, suppose there are immeasurable hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, millions of living beings who are undergoing various trials and suffering. If they hear of this Bodhisattva Perceiver of the World’s Sounds and single-mindedly call his name, then at once he will perceive the sound of their voices and they will all gain deliverance from their trials.”
“If someone, holding fast to the name of Bodhisattva Perceiver of the World’s Sounds, should enter a great fire, the fire could not burn him. This would come about because of this bodhisattva’s authority and supernatural power. If one were washed away by a great flood and call upon his name, one would immediately find himself in a shallow place.”
“Suppose there were a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a million living beings who, seeking for gold, silver, lapis lazuli, seashell, agate, coral, amber, pearls, and other treasures, set out on the great sea, and supposedly a fierce wind should blow their ship off course and it drifted to the land of rakshasas demons. If among those people there is even just one who calls the name of Bodhisattva Perceiver of the World’s Sounds, then all those people will be delivered from their troubles with the rakshasas. This is why he is called perceiver of the World’s Sounds.”” (Watson translation, 1993).
Thus, since there is such as wide range of beliefs and practices in Buddhism across the various traditions, there may be some beliefs at least among the Buddhist laity in different parts of the world that include belief in a divine being that is deeply compassionate, responsive to human needs, and is worshipped as a god or like God.
The Buddha as God
Do some Buddhists pray to and worship the Buddha as Western monotheists worship God? In other words, do Buddhists in some part of the world simply call God by the name Buddha and worship him accordingly? Most traditional Buddhist scholars say that Buddhists do not pray to or worship the Buddha as God, but rather say that such activities – including the placing of palms together with the fingers directed heavenward – are only gestures of respect and admiration for the Buddha. However, let us examine how the Buddha’s own immediate followers considered him after his death. Shortly after the Buddha’s death, some of his followers began to build relics of the Buddha to worship and pray to, and it became customary to make pilgrimages to places where he had walked (Religion Facts, 2004).
While there is no saying (sutta) of the Buddha that instructs his followers to love or seek help from him as a divine being, he does advise them to take refuge in the Tripe Gem (Dhamayut Order, 2013). As noted earlier, the Triple Gem are the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. In fact, the way for someone to convert to Buddhism often involves saying, “I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dhamma. I take refuge in the Sangha.” The Dhammapada says:
“But who to the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha as refuge has gone, sees with full insight the Four Noble Truths; Misery, the arising of misery, and the transcending of misery, the Noble Eightfold Path leading to the allaying of misery. This, indeed, is a refuge secure. This is the highest refuge. Having come to this refuge, one is released from all misery.” (190-192)
Buddhist scholars do not say that taking refuge in the Buddha means to worship him as a god or God. However, what about lay Buddhists as they struggle with daily life? Might some misunderstand and interpret this to mean that they could or should worship and pray to the Buddha as the Supreme God/Brahman? Do not many Asian Buddhists have statues of the Buddha in their household shrines or attend temples with large pictures or statues of the Buddha? Note this commentary on the Mahayana Lotus Sutra:
“In Mahayana belief, the Buddha has become an all-knowing being, somewhere between a divine person – a mortal man who achieves immortality – and a god, to whom even Hindu gods offer respect. His wisdom surpasses that of the other gods, because he recognises the uncreated and infinite nature of the universe, whereas some of them imagine themselves as creators.” (Anonymous, n.d.)
Williams et al (2012, p 26) also note that later Buddhist tradition held that the Buddha was omniscient (all-knowing), a characteristic that is usually attributed only to God in Western traditions.
Furthermore, Buddhists are instructed to take refuge in the Dhamma (the teachings of the Buddha). The Dhamma is described by Theravada scholar Gethin (1998) as “the basis of things, the underlying nature of things, the way things are; in short, it is the truth about things, the truth about the world” (p 35). Might the Dhamma also be understood as a type of theistic force or concept? Gethin (1998, p. 30) notes that there is conceptual overlap in the nature of the Buddha, Dharma, and Brahma in Eastern thought:
“One early Buddhist text puts it that the Buddha is “one whose body is Dharma, whose body is Brahma; who has become Dharma, who has become Brahma”. Now dharma and brahma are two technical terms pregnant with emotional and religious meaning. Among other things Dharma is “the right was to behave”, “the perfect was to act”; hence it is also the teaching of the Buddha since by following the teaching of the Buddha one follows the path that ends in Dharma or perfect action. We have already come across the term Brahma denoting a divine being (p. 24), but in Buddhist texts brahma is also used to denote or describe the qualities of such divine beings; thus brahma conveys something of the sense of the English “divine”, something of the sense of “holy” and something of the sense of “perfection”. Like the English word “body” the Sanskrit/Pali word kiiya means both a physical body and figuratively a collection or aggregate of something-as in “a body of opinion”. To say that the Buddha is dharma-kiiya means that he is at once the embodiment of Dharma and the collection or sum of all those qualities – non-attachment, loving kindness, wisdom, etc. – that constitute Dharma.”
Love, at least non-attached love, is certainly one of the core features of Dhamma, which in its essence involves doing no harm to anyone and instead treating others with compassion (based on the Eightfold Path). The concept of unconditional love (agape) in Christianity is quite similar to this Buddhist view of compassion. The New Testament also describes God in terms of love: “Whoever doe not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:8). Thus, in some ways of thinking, the distinction between the terms Buddha, Dhamma, and God becomes somewhat nebulous, and the possibility of overlap between them does exist.
A discussion of the possibility that – at least from a Western viewpoint – the Buddha may in some way have been considered divine is the following (Gethin (1998, pp 28-29):
“So what does this transcendence imply about the final nature of a buddha? If one is thinking in categories dictated and shaped by the theologies of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and also modern Western thought, there is often a strong inclination to suppose that such a question should be answered in terms of the categories of human and divine: either the Buddha was basically a man or he was some kind of god, perhaps even God. But something of an imaginative leap is required here, for these are not the categories of Indian or Buddhist thought. In the first place, according to the Buddhist view of things, the nature of beings is not eternally or absolutely fixed. Beings that were once humans or animals maybe reborn as gods; beings that were once gods maybe reborn as animals or in hellish realms. Certainly, for the Buddhist tradition, the being who became buddha or awakened had been born a man, but equally that being is regarded as having spent many previous lives as a god. Yet in becoming a buddha he goes beyond such categories of being as human and divine.”
Not clear, however, is what exactly Gethin means by a buddha that is beyond divine. What is beyond divine or beyond Brahman, the Supreme God, which at least in Hinduism means the true essence of everything?
The third of the Three Jewels and object of refuge is the Sangha or Buddhist community of believers who are seeking to follow the Eightfold Path. There is also some resemblance here to the teachings of Jesus, who encouraged followers to love God (here, the Buddha/Dhamma) with all their heart and soul and love their neighbour (Sangha) as their self. The Christian community is sometimes called “the body of Christ.” Indeed, others (Borg & Kronfield, 1999) have pointed out the similarities between the sayings of the Buddha and those of Jesus, whom Christians believe is God.
Conclusions
While Buddhism is widely considered a non-theistic religion, I have speculated here about belief in the divine in Buddhism and the Buddha as God, raising the possibility that many Buddhist laypersons (in actual practice) may pray to and worship a divine being or concept that is similar to what Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus pray to and worship, especially when seeking solace and refuge from the agonies of change and loss that characterise life on this earthly place.