Worshipping God as a Buddhist Mormon

In Article of Faith 11, it is written: "We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may."

This article of faith guarantees me the privilege to be a Buddhist Mormon, even though the Christian faithful who are deep in Christology claim that such syncretism is anathema to Christianity.

For myself as a Mormon, my Buddhist roots help me to clear my mind so that I am able to worship God according to the dictates of my own conscience.

Most of my worship consists of reading Mormon literature, and understanding various aspects of the LDS faith.

Additionally, the dictates of my own conscience is greatly influenced by religious pluralism, which helps to inspire a Christology that is further illumined by my Pure Land Buddhist origins.

Amida Buddha of Pure Land is defined as the boundless light of wisdom and the boundless life of compassion.

In Christianity, the light of Christ is akin to the spirit of Christ, and thus is closely identified with the Holy Ghost (Holy Spirit). As well, the Christ is referred to as the Word. Thus, the Word symbolizes the spiritual wisdom derived from the truth of Atonement i.e. that Jesus Christ sacrificed his life for the sins of mankind and God's Mercy is a free gift to all Christians whose sins are washed away in baptism.

Thus the Holy Ghost is the agent by which spiritual wisdom is derived by acting on the Christian through prayer and meditation inspired by scripture.

Likewise, compassion is symbolized by God's Mercy for all Christians who repent of their sins by following the articles of their faith.

Thus, much of my Buddhist practice of meditation helps me in my study of the Book of Mormon and related LDS scripture, which is vital to the greater understanding of LDS ideology.

Indeed, I am thankful to God for the privilege of his worship according to the dictates of my own conscience.

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References:

• LDS Articles of Faith: http://www.mormon.org/beliefs/articles-of-faith
  
• Why Mormons Are Buddhist and Vice Versa: http://mormonmatters.org/2008/03/12/why-mormons-are-buddhists-vice-versa/
  

Why I Turn Back to Reflect on God (satire)

My reason for reflecting on God was due to the early influence of a spiritual yearning sparked by a Mennonite youth fellowship group. I remember the reason for falling out with the Christians was due to the error a few young men have with self-will. This led me to make statements which led me astray. As well, there was influence from my parents to choose them over the youth group.

I am attracted to Christianity because that community is sometimes outside of the mainstream of society, due to group dynamics motivated by aversion to "worldliness".

Worldliness means knowing the ways of the world. In contrast, godliness is living a God-centered life. This is a life-long quest, yet few people know of it.

Of the people who know of it, only a few of them dare follow it, for it is a strait path i.e. each and everyone of them who enter heaven pass through a narrow door that represents the Christ.

Even though I am a human being, subject to error, my belief in God does not mean I am perfect or holy, only that my actions sometimes center around God and other times, around the world.

Thus this is a personal conviction which is based on a spiritual belief in God, tempered by my Buddhist upbringing. For the Buddhist concept of the Absolute closely resembles the Christian Heaven, which the closest the faithful gets to God that any person can imagine.

Although God has no physical form, my faith in a high power helps rationalize the Godhead thusly:

"I fear God out of respect for all sentient beings. Therefore I am fearless before the world."

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Recently edited: January 28, 2014 0727H
Originally posted: January 12, 2011 0140H

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.

Laity Conflict With Dalai Lama Isn't Buddhist but Political

Those of us who have heard of the members of a subsect of Vajrayana in which its followers respond with aggression toward the Dalai Lama would wonder why they are not behaving like bodhisattvas. It is because they do not believe themselves to be bodhisattvas. This is why the Dalai Lama condemned their leader. In order not to cause controversy I will not mention the name of the subsect or their guru because I view as an internal matter and because just mentioning this is like showing disrespect for the Buddha.

However, this type of behavior is not new, nor is it limited to Mahayana. Certain Theravada schools have had monks abuse their position of power as well. However, it does not make a monk or a layperson an evil person. Rather, it shows that all sentient beings, including you and I, from non-Buddhists to Buddhists and their leaders are subject to six root delusions and twenty lesser delusions, afflictions and other spiritual maladies consistent with self grasping.

Such maladies do not go away only their own due to the six spiritual poisons (attachment (raga), anger (pratigha), ignorance (avidya), pride/conceit (māna), doubt (vicikitsa) and wrong view/false view/opinionatedness) arising from ego delusion (reification of the self i.e. as a permanent entity that is unchanging). Reification is when an object is worshiped or esteemed so highly that the object is given cult status.

Likely they arise by reification of spiritual leaders as justification for acting out of character as bodhisattvas, thus leading me to suspect that they consider themselves ordinary lay people included in the Mahayana Buddhist dedication to all sentient beings.

If this is true, then it is regretful that disciples with the humility of a layperson act in such a way. Were they to act with the humility of bodhisattvas, there would not be sectarian conflict within Buddhism.

Yet no one is immune to such behavior as all sentient beings include human beings. Although I find justification to rationalize conflict, it is beneath us to argue and fight with the Dalai Lama since that breaks the precept of respect for Buddha.

Though I am a lay person, ordinary and unable to follow one precept, let alone the Five Precepts, it saddens me to see even the Buddhadharma (Buddha's Teaching) being place secondary to what is the worldly endeavor of politics.

Thou and God art One

The only time Christianity has one bit of Buddhism in it is the minority view that God is in your heart, and if God is there, so too is Jesus. That a Christian can maintain this belief is proof of religious tolerance. Any Christian who claims God and Jesus exist apart from man is the closest one can get to idol worship. The belief that man and God are one is the most ancient of worship.

Masturbation and Phallus Worship

Finally, a little religious mantra for what I do best at night:

NARACHASTRA PRAYOGA Sanskrit
Men who worship their own sexual organs.

SENZURI Japanese
Male masturbation (literally "a hundred rubs"). "Shiko shiko manzuri" is the female version (literally "ten thousand rubs").

Hm... if zuri means rubs, then "sen" means "a hundred" and "man", "ten thousand". But I thought "shiko" means "urine." Maybe it means "sexual secretions."

Thus, a man may take a hundred strokes while a woman attains her satisfaction ten thousand times.

Buddha boy thought to be incarnation of the Buddha

The evidence:

Bahadur Bamjon is said to have survived 6 months without food and water, in meditation.

He sits in meditation from dawn to dusk.

His mother is named Maya Devi, the same name as the Buddha's mother.

What we don't know is what Bahadur does from dusk to dawn.

My first reaction is that, in order to make ends meet, a mother is driven to claim her son is the Buddha reborn.

In response to this story, Buddhists could explain that a Buddha incarnate would have to do much more than sit still from dawn to dusk.

If this Buddha boy only serves as an idol to be worshiped, then it's a form of primitive Hindu worship, where devotees worship a reincarnation of one of their deities (avatar).

Indeed, the Buddha is thought to be such an avatar by many Hindus.

Such thinking -- the worship of the Buddha as deity -- contradicts the fact that the Buddha was a man. And the worship of the Buddha incarnated in a person is not originally Buddhist.

For the Buddha never promoted himself as a deity, nor did he endorse worshiping people as deities.