Buddhist Monotheists?

[Quakerguy]

Are there any Buddhists that are montheists?

 

[dyanaprajna2011]

No, not in any traditional sense. Buddhists do not worship any gods. We believe the gods exist, but only as more 'spiritually evolved', but still subject to the same laws of karma, death, and rebirth as humans. The gods have very little importance in Buddhism, and there is certainly no creator god, no personal god that brings salvation.

 

[Twilight Hue]

There are schools of Buddhism such as the case found in the practice of Zen* that ascribe to no god whatsoever, nor involves the worship of any central figure. Such references in mentioning, should they occur, are metophorical and not regarded as being any divine being that one expects with the conventional sense of the word.

*Such schools as Soto, Rinzai, and Chan

 

[DreadFish]

I would go along with what Dyanaprajna said, but clarify terms. Devas and deities are not quite the same thing as a god. Its a weird language thing. Anyway, yeah, devas just had the karma to be born as devas. They live a long time, have lots of power and experience pleasure. It is taught that they are actually often quite ignorant though. Now, there are similar concepts to God in certain Mahayana schools.

It would not, however, be an individual, separate dualistic God, in the monotheist sense. Rather, it is the Adi Buddha or, original enlightened mind. That which all things emanate from. It is more panentheistic, but not actually panentheistic I guess. It is like God in an emanationist sense, but still not quite.

The first couple of paragraphs here would clear it up:
Adi-Buddha - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[dyanaprajna2011]

I would go along with what Dyanaprajna said, but clarify terms. Devas and deities are not quite the same thing as a god. Its a weird language thing. Anyway, yeah, devas just had the karma to be born as devas. They live a long time, have lots of power and experience pleasure. It is taught that they are actually often quite ignorant though. Now, there are similar concepts to God in certain Mahayana schools.

It would not, however, be an individual, separate dualistic God, in the monotheist sense. Rather, it is the Adi Buddha or, original enlightened mind. That which all things emanate from. It is more panentheistic, but not actually panentheistic I guess. It is like God in an emanationist sense, but still not quite.

The first couple of paragraphs here would clear it up:
Adi-Buddha - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lol. I was going to add something along those lines to my post, but I didn't want to confuse the boy. But yeah, you are right about that. There is the concept of some Mahayana schools of the Adi-buddha, and the concept is particularly important in Vajrayana schools. Adi-buddha, whether one considers it Samantabhadra, Vajrasattva, or Vairocana, is not a separate entity. It's the primordial Buddha-essence that pervades all things. I would say it's more pantheistic than panentheistic, but it's hard to define using western terminology.

Edit: it could also be considered a kind of monist-eminationism, as well. Those weird western terms.

 

[Engyo]

From my perspective, according to Buddhism, gods are another class of unenlightened beings. Also there is no omnipotent, omniscient creator deity; so Buddhists are not monotheists. Very few Buddhists could be considered theists of any stripe.