Who is your God? (Buddhism, doctrine, worship, Lord, religion)

[Aupmanyav]

How can these views be personal when the scriptures have been detailing it since millenia?

[zenzero]

Yes, Brahman is described as the creator and you negate it.
Did I understand your statement wronly?

[zenzero]

Yes, Brahman is described as the creator and you negate it.
Did I understand your statement wronly?

[K.Venugopal]

This quotation from Swami Vivekananda may be illuminating:

“Here is the word Srishti, which expresses the universe. Mark that the word does not mean creation. I am helpless in talking English; I have to translate the Sanskrit words as best as I can. It is Srishti, projection. At the end of a cycle, everything becomes finer and finer and is resolved back into the primal state from which it sprang, and there it remains for a time, quiescent, ready to spring forth again. That is Srishti, projection.” [Advaita Vedanta – The Scientific Religion, page 11]

[Hema]

Originally Posted by Aupmanyav

Nice to return back to the forum and spar with you, Hema. I would put it the other way. We are the physical body and everything in the universe, i.e., Brahman is physical; and there is no God or Spirit, that is what we imagine.

Welcome back. You are entitled to your own religious beliefs however what you are saying ie. Brahman is only physical...can you kindly explain this? Whatever is physical occupies space and time and is therefore limited by time. Yes the physical world is also Brahman but if Brahman is only the formed and not the formed AND formless...doesn't it mean that Brahman like our bodies would also be subjected to birth and death? If creation came out of Brahman...then Brahman would have always been existing...therefore not subjected to time. However if Brahman is only physical it would be subjected to time. Betwen the cycles of creation when everything is reabsorbed into Brahman...what form does Brahman exist in at that time...how does it look...since it is physical?

[Aupmanyav]

Originally Posted by zenzero

Yes, Brahman is described as the creator and you negate it. Did I understand your statement wrongly?

No, you have not understood my statement wrongly. That is what I believe. Brahman has no need to create anything. What we see is our illusion. The truth is completely different. "Brahma Satyam Jagan-mithya".

[Aupmanyav]

Hema, physical and non-physical are the shackles of our perception. What about a ray of light, is it physical? Is it non-physical? The quantas (energy) in a ray of light can convert into substance which is very much physical and conversely the substance can convert into light, heat, and electricity. Time can slow, time can go fast, time can stop, time can regress. Think in the manner of Einstein and Planck. How does space expands or contracts? The world is very strange for those who do not know, not that anybody knows for sure. Are we subjected to birth and death? Is not what constitutes us beyond birth and death. Can you kill an atom? Can you destroy energy? Only Brahman, the universal substrate is truth.

[zenzero]

Friend Aupmanyav,
What you are saying is that though Brahma is the creator but what he creates is an illusion and so it is *mithya*?
Again in your sentence you are saying that Brahman is the truth.
You are trying to explain Physics of existence and again talking of Brahma. CAn you explain through Science [physics] as to what is existence how it is created, preseved and destroyed? instead of bringing Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh? Let us assume that they are just the three stages that matter go through in a cycle; then what?
Love & rgds

[Aupmanyav]

First, let me thank you for calling me a friend, the sentiment is reciprocated. If a person is 'non-dualist', then for him there is no God. I am one and therefore, I do not believe in Gods. I believe in one energy/substance (please note, not a God, people many times translate energy into God. I take it as light and atoms as in physics) constituting the whole universe and its properties giving rise to space and time. I call this energy/substance as Brahman, the universal substrate, which is not a God.

So, perhaps no one creates the universe, actually there may not be any creation, and what we see could only be the result of our limited perceptions (being able to see a small spectrum of light though it ranges from Gamma Rays to Radio Waves and Long Waves, wave-lengths varying from below 10 picometer (one trillionth of a meter) to 100,000 kms., I am pointing out our limitations).

In my view, there is no creation, preservation, or destruction; no Brahma, Vishnu, or Mahesh. Brahman fills the universe like a sea and the currents inside the sea (because there is no outside) are percieved by us as creation, preservation, and destruction. Many thanks for giving me a ear. You need to focus on the difference between Brahma (the creation God for the theists) and Brahman (the universal principle for the advaitists, the non-dualists). They are not the same, though the difference in just an 'n' at the end.

[zenzero]

Friend Aupmanyav,
Thank you for pointing my mistake as I did overlooked Brahman and Brahma one is a person and the other the principle.
There seems to be unity in most of our thinking except that one should understand like this as in Zen: First the Mountains and mountains and then mountains and not mountains and finally mountains are mountains.
meaning when we start on the path as a novice we see things as things as material then slowly we understand the physics of materails as energy and that nothing is static or permanent etc and so mountains then are not mountains. Finally having become enlightened we also see things as they are or in its SUCHNESS and so mountains are again mountains.
Similarly we cannot deny that the process of birth, preservation and death do not take place it does and so have to be accepted.
I am sure you have understood the point that is made here.
Love & rgds