Of Gods and, Well, Other Gods
People standing outside Buddhism and looking in often comment that for an allegedly nontheistic religion it has a lot of gods. Which I suppose is true, but Buddhist "gods" aren't gods as most Westerners understand the word.
There's a book review in the Sri Lanka Sunday Times that discusses the distinction from a Theravadin perspective. The book is Gods in Buddhism - Origin, Function and Relevance by Professor M.M.J. Marasinghe. The most important point, I think, comes at the very end of the review. In most religions and cultures, "gods" are beings with special powers and abilities who can help or harm humans. Much of the function of religion amounts to pleasing or appeasing these beings in order to receive favor and blessings from them.
However, the reviewer writes, "The gods in the Buddhist conception are merely a class of non-visible beings who have no power or influence over man or the world." Practitioners of Vajrayana might disagree with this definition, but as I said, this is the Theravadin understanding of the gods in the early Pali texts.
People curious about Buddhism sometimes express concern about all the supernatural beings. In most schools, if the supernatural beings bother you, just ignore them. Or file them all under "allegory.
The gods (Deva) and devils (Yakkha) all have seemingly vanished after the time of The Buddha. Nobody has come across them later!
In the Pali cannon one can see the gods have visited The Buddha only during the night (illumintaing the Jetavana temple, where Buddha lived, with their glowing bodies).
All Buddhists know gods are born without parents. But, in Mahamangala Suthra (in Therawada Pali cannon) The Buddha teaches a god ( as it is explained in books) that treating parents and children is a good practice(Managala)!
In Alawaka Suthra Buddha was talking with a devil (Yakkha)called Alawaka about Prajna!
By reading you never find the truth behind all these. What the acadamics do is read through all books and come up with their ideas. This is the lay method or using the five senses to find the truth. Then they argue eachone’s openion is correct.
When you know the original Buddhism with the Practical Noble Eightfold Path you can decide whether the above stories are true or falls.
Gods are good thoughts helpful in attaining Nirvana (called Sobana Chaithasika) and they appear when you practice NEP. A god meeting The Buddha in the night means a such great thought coming to Buddha’s mind (to detached mind) when he was in Nirodha (the supreme Jhana).
Thoughts of this type are categorised as Manussa (human), Deva(divine) and Brahma (Brahama gods) and there are 19 types of them.
The devil Alawaka is nothing more than attachment! Attachment was also called Mara (the god of death). If you get detached you are in Nirvana and no death. Therefore, so long as you do not know path to detachment you are under the control of Mara the god of death! If you know detachment you can postphone death. The Arhaths pass in to Nirvana only when they decide to do so. Even The Buddha did it.
Most of mythical beings found in Buddhism are only erroneously understood. The Buddha never wrote his teaching. When the teaching was written the practical NEP was not there to understand what The Buddha said.
All stories related to supernatural beings are various descriptions of the practical NEP. All Buddha’ teaching is about NEP, his discovery.
Gods are there, hell is there. But, there is no way to see them other than by the NEP. That was how The Buddha saw them also.
To see all these one must know the practical NEP.
I appreciate it that this topic came up, because I must admit that reading–in English translation–about “gods” in the Buddhist texts at one point almost turned me away from Buddhist thought altogether. But the human imagination abhors a vacuum. It populates the world with all sorts of invisible entities, if only not to feel alone. It reminds me a little of angels in the Abrahamic faiths (plus the jinn if you are a Muslim). They are immortal and go back and forth between the divine and earthly realms, but do not rule the world (well, some mystical traditions fudge on that a little, but basically they do not). However, though traditionalists believe in them, it seems to me they are not fundamental to the faith. As Barbara and Keerthi both indicate, the Buddhist “gods” can be regarded as allegorical or as symbols and metaphors. One has to be careful with allegorizing, I think, because you can allegorize a religion to death. But Buddhism is based on its ideas, not the literal truth of the things described in the sutras. Dharma is Dharma, wherever it came from, whether it arose from a man who meditated under a tree or from the collective consciousness. That, to me, is the beauty of it.
My limited understanding of gods/ deities in the Tibetan tradition is that they are manifestations of our own characteristics, such as Chenrezig being the manifestation of compassion. They are not considered actual beings, particularly not beings to be worshipped. We use them to visualize our own capacity to manifest these characteristics.
“Man seeks, and has always sought, to explain everything, from the universe to his own boots, by attributing it to an entity, and so lives in a world entirely peopled by entities. He is conditioned to interpreting everything his senses record in terms of supposed entities which therefore fill his horizon, so that they may be said to constitute his whole manner of thinking. And this man is asked to realise that all these entities are of his own invention, for no such thing as an entity has ever existed, or ever could exist, in any conceivable circumstances, anywhere in the cosmos! And foremost among these non-existent entities is that one which he supposes to be — himself.
…. So when we realise the truth, when the understanding, crowding in upon us, bursts into flame and illumines our vision, what is our reaction? What could it be but an immense roar of laughter? If it is not that, if it is any other kind of reaction to knowledge — beware of it!
And when the laughter has died down — we can start starting to put our universe in order.”
excerpted from: Why Lazarus Laughed
@ David
Like the gods Dharma is another word widely used in Buddhism without knowing its correct meaning.
Today, everybody calls Buddha’s teaching as Dharma.
In commentaries there are about 250 meanings given for the word Dharma. What did The Buddha called Dharma?
Dharma is detachment!
Attachment is the opposite to detachment and is called Adharma (and Mara). Therefore, the commentators have equalled Dharma to Adharma 250 times!
Buddhism is all about Marga (path), Phala (fruit) and Nirvana (bliss).
Marga is practising non attachment (in NEP).
Phala is getting detached.
Nirvana is the bliss of detachment.
Therefore, all Buddha Dharma is about detachment and as Buddha means realisation (not a person) Buddha Dharma means “realisation of detachment”. For this one needs Prajna and Prajna starts and grows only when one practice NEP or non-attachment.
Mind is the creator. Therefore, if you replace the words God and Brahma by mind you will see christianity and hinduism both approach Buddhism.
Gods in Buddhism are helpful in taking one to Nirvana in this life if the correct meaning is found!
@KEERTHI
Thanks for the succinct definition of terms.
Now where do the various Buddhist gods fit in by your definition?
Fascinating! We just know the gods as representative of the sixth “world” of life. They’re also quite useful as stand-ins for allegories and as a nod to the local religions. You may notice the grand poets invoking the gods as literary devices representing various emotions, events, and so on, even when they didn’t really believe in them as actual beings. When I think of the Buddhist gods, I think of them in the same way.
I was a Roman Catholic before I adopted Buddhism (or it adopted me) 35 years ago. I had some trouble with all the Christian saints, many of whom actually lived and died, and many who turned out to be fictitious. I consider the Buddhist “gods” to be fictitious, and I used to have trouble with them, too. But… My best friend died nine years ago. So in a sense when I gain comfort from thinking of him and feeling his presence (which, by the way, was extraordinarily strong in the first weeks after his death), I’m “communing,” in a sense, with a fictitious being. Does it matter? I no longer think it does. If saints, gods, or departed loved ones can help us here and now, why turn down that help because these beings somehow fail to pass an acid test of “reality?” Do we need to be so choosy?
My own feeling about the Buddhist pantheon is that these characters do represent various psychological aspects of ourselves. But how dry that sounds! In fact, though I think it’s true in a sense, I also think it’s silly to have to qualify and categorize to such an extent.
Do the gods exist? No. Yes. Sometimes I get annoyed with them, or tired of them. But mainly I welcome their help with my own clumsy, mistake-ridden, plodding through this world of samsara.
I am very fortunate to have obtained a small bronze statue of Mahakala made in the 19th century in Tibet. If you could see it, I think you’d feel the power emanating from it. I also have a cheap but beautiful reproduction of a thangka of Mahakala on my wall.
Do I think Mahakala is “real” in the way you, reading this, are “real?” No. And yet, his presence is a comfort. To think of St. Francis of Assisi can be comforting. To think of my mother, long dead, is a comfort. Essentially, I no longer see any important difference between “gods” and human friends, especially those who cannot, for one reason or another, be physically present.
I’m putting it badly. Maybe I should just say that I’ve found out in the course of (soon) seventy years that the world is a lot more mysterious than I used to think — or than most of us want to admit.
@ John Hunter
Pls see the comment 01 above.
This is all very interesting if somewhat elitist. It seems to me it all comes down to “what do you believe”? Yet I cannot escape the thought that most past century Buddhist would disagree. Even now, serious Buddhists pray frequently. How can you have prayer to a God that is just a manifestation of yourself?
Also, not being fluent in lingo or jargon, what does NEP stand for?
I cannot escape the thought that most past century Buddhist would disagree.
You would be wrong, but a lot of what gets called “Buddhism” is more local folk religion than Buddhism, which confuses people.
Even now, serious Buddhists pray frequently.
Some do, some don’t. Praying generally isn’t part of the Zen tradition. We invoke, but we don’t pray. The Tibetans pray, but the Tibetans would be the first to tell you that ultimately nothing is separate, meaning there is no God that is separate.
How can you have prayer to a God that is just a manifestation of yourself?
Yet that is what many Buddhists do. Truly, you have to practice Buddhism for a while to understand it.
Thank you for sharing your thoguhts. But one thing I still am wondering about; what does NEP stand for?
NEP = Noble Eightfold Path
You can find many books about Buddhist those contain story of god and other kind of non-human being. But if you study Sila, practice, NEP or any other rules, there is nothing concern to god, devil, hell or heaven.
In Buddhism, we focus on the present, not the past or the future. We are not accept or reject something beyond our 5 senses, beyond our knowledge. It is useless to talk about those things.
You may also have read about some people can do something as a superhero, supernatural. We also do not accept or reject those condition.
I use the phase ‘not accept or reject’ twice here because as a Buddhism, do not believe in anything you cannot prove by yourself. Deva and Yakkha are something we do not have ability to prove by ourselves. If we talk about these topics, it just karma, Moha; delusion.
One way you can prove about heaven and hell is your feeling, your heart, your Citta. If you are happy, you in heaven now. If you are painful, you are in hell. So we talk about heaven and hell but we do not talk about god and devil.
About NEP (the noble eightfold path)
1.Right view, right understanding
2. Right thought
3. Right speech
4. Right action
5. Right livelihood
6. Right effort
7. Right mindfulness
8. Right concentration
Believe in god is not a right view.
Thinking about god is not a right thought.
Talking about god is not a right speech.
Trying to prove about god is not a right effort.
Language complicates our ability to communicate some of the underlying realities here. The co-arising of any event in a moment makes the statement “these characters do represent various psychological aspects of ourselves” problematic (especially since the “self” is also problematic).
When I was a child, I had many dreams, visions, and spiritual experiences. In those days, I interpreted them from the only historical and cultural perspective I had: Christianity. Today, my efforts are more along the lines of experiencing directly without making up any stories about what it means or placing the experiences within specific theological or philosophical contexts. I do remember one teacher, whose student was excited about having just had a vision of the Buddha, telling the student to keep meditating and it would go away.
~~jj