My religion has a lot of flavours

I'm a deistic panentheist with a respect for the whole universe, and all sentient beings including me and you, that based on realizing reality (life, the universe and everything) is God (the Absolute).

Then a person might ask me: what of good and evil?

Well, that's like having a magical coin: one side's good, the other side' evil, and the creator of that coin is God who symbolizes moral judgment.

"What about salvation?" another person might ask.

If there is a God, and given that God created the soul within me, which was loaned to me at birth, and knowing that my soul returns to God (with interest), then my mindful practice of unconditional love is in effect a form of salvation in itself.

For the process involved in practicing that love is in effect salvation.

Thus the story of Jesus serves as an inspiration to people who want to know God.

However, the closest thing to God as the Absolute is the description of Heaven!

Essentially, my religion has the following flavors: a Buddhist panentheism in which an almost infinite number of universes exist with an infinite number of Buddhas willing to instruct all sentient beings in their infinite number of Pure Lands, and an infinite number of bodhisattvas able to help all sentient beings awaken to the truth. In this multiverse there also exists the Absolute, which is the closest I get to God.

In practicing Buddhism, Buddha Recitation and meditation are the main parts of the mindful practice that I use to "worship God". This is a worshipless worship since it is empty of worship. It would be incorrect to call Buddha Recitation worship when it is done to remind me of the Buddha. Hence it is called Buddha Remembrance.

Perhaps intellectually understanding a Buddhist concept such as the Absolute is a form of worship, but it too is a worshipless worship since the Absolute transcends a dualistic notion of God. As well, intellectual understanding of a concept has no element of worship.

Calling understanding worship is incorrect. Rather, it is a part of the process of learning.

Returning to mindful practice, it consists of Buddha Remembrance to pay homage to the Buddha, and meditation to help calm my mind. Once my mind is calm, the clear mind arises to help me to the next level of meditation, insight.

With clarity of mind, I am able to attain the samadhi of loving-kindness, that single-minded insight symbolized by the boundless light of Great Wisdom that is Amida and the boundless life of Great Compassion that is Amitayus, both of whom are the dual aspects of Amida Buddha.

Thus, my religion has a lot of Buddhist flavors, and the only sparkle of God is the Absolute which might be similar to the Christian heaven. As a deist, I accept the Christian heaven as a place where all its members live eternally in Jesus. However, Jesus and God are not a part of this Buddhist multiverse, for the Christian Heaven and Hell dwell in their little universe.

What connects God to the Buddhist multiverse is loving-kindness, for both Amida Buddha and Jesus are symbols of the unconditional love known as loving-kindness.

As you can tell, my religion is a panentheism with a deistic component of which the Christian universe as described exists outside of the Buddhist component. Additionally, the deistic component has a respect for the Shinto deities but without any worship of them, because they exist only on an intellectual level.

Were I to practice Shinto it would be best expressed in dance, usually to the tune of Asian music, preferably the Yoshida Kiyoshi's Rising Sun, complete with shamisen and taiko drums.

As well, I have a respect for Veershaivism, the Lingayatism of Basavanna, the Shiva saint of 12th Century India.

As you can tell my religion has a lot of flavours.

A Deistic Critique of Eschatology

Eschatology is useful for the study of how human cultures have envisioned life after death.

When it involves judgment, eschatology violates the principle that only God may judge us.

Thus, depictions of heaven and hell are sacrilege used to control, influence and motivate people who may be led to believe their lives are more worth living when they follow the doctrines of cultures whose religions make strong use of such motifs.

If a person's life is worth more because the fear of hell and the desire for heaven after death motivates her to choose God, then such a person's motivation is based on spiritual ignorance about the purpose of heaven and hell.

However, if the fear of hell and desire for heaven leads her to become one with God, and let Him into her heart, so that she realizes how worthy to God she is from her birth until this moment in time, then her motivation is based on spiritual awareness.

The purpose of heaven and hell is to instruct us about how cultural beliefs about life after death reflect our fears about what we have done in life, and whether that would affect our spiritual life after death.

This forms much of what eschatology is.

How close a person has gotten to God that he knows Him to be in his heart, from birth to death, helps by using eschatology in a manner that respects God's role in life after death.

For eschatology only depicts the spiritual life after death, not the corporeal life before death.

If God created me from birth, and my soul, then the cruelties depicted in the various hells are sacrilege because I cannot see why God would require what he has made to be harmed repeatedly as punishment for not believing in Him.

Why should God harm a piece of Himself?

Likewise, if God should give me a new body and put me in a place where I live forever when originally I was a part of Him, I do not see why I must remain separate from Him when He is always as close to me as my heart.

Would it not just be easier for me to let my soul become one with God through meditation and be done with it?

Thus heaven and hell are merely states of mind created by careful examination of eschatological works of various religions.

They distract us from the spiritual truth that each of us is created by God, that the soul is "God in the heart", and that we return to God at death.

Think of God as the ocean. Each soul, a drop of water. Many drops become a trickle, a stream, a river. And to the ocean all rivers flow. Likewise, all life flows on that endless cycle of birth, living and death.

Are not then heaven and hell metaphors to describe that journey?

Perhaps each drop of water returning to the ocean is heaven. The mind boggles at the possibilities of ascribing different points of life's journey as hell.

In any case, eschatology only works in religions with a strong sense of good versus evil.

Yet it fails to work when the spiritual truth about man's existence and the soul as the creation of God is revealed.