Brad Warner is an unconventional American Zen instructor, who appears sincerely to consider that he has discovered God, that God needs to be — and even is — an intrinsic a part of Buddhist observe and realization, that others would profit in the event that they discovered God too, and who thinks that that believing in God may truly assist us clear up the world’s issues. He outlines all this in his newest e book, There Is No God And He Is All the time With You, wherein he gives “straight discuss why this ‘godless faith’ [Zen Buddhism] has so much to say about God.”
A number of the above shall be as confounding for you because it was for me. In spite of everything, Buddhism is a non-theistic faith. The Buddha was not God, his non secular realization had nothing to do with discovering God, and the teachings that Buddhists observe don’t have anything to do with God. Buddhism in actual fact is enticing to many people as a result of it’s a non secular custom that’s non-theistic, however Warner stands this on its head:
…in my view it’s fully incorrect to say that Buddhism is a faith with out a God. In reality, it’s fairly the other. To me Buddhism is a option to method and perceive God with out coping with faith.
The God that Warner believes in just isn’t the anthropomorphic deity who, in widespread creativeness, sits within the sky making judgements about us and selecting, on Saturday afternoons, which faculty soccer workforce he’ll favor. Warner’s God is your complete universe, is us, is actually indefinable, and is the supreme fact and floor of all being. For instance:
Title: There Is No God And He Is All the time With You
Writer: Brad Warner
Writer: New World Library
ISBN: 978-1-60868-183-9
Obtainable from: New World Library, Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.com.
- “I believed that the nonmaterial facets of our existence have been actual parts of the pure universe, and that we would name these facets of the universe God.” (web page 138)
- “I’m not speaking about God as the primary reason behind all the things. I’m saying that our direct expertise of life is God. Life is God experiencing God.” (web page 81)
- “God transcends any attributes we might think about. Attributes, qualities, and traits all distinguish one thing from different issues. However one among God’s attributes is that he is all the things.” (web page 122)
- “…the Chinese language phrase inmo … refers back to the ineffable substratum of actuality, the bottom of all being and nonbeing. To me, that is simply one other means of claiming God.” (web page XIV)
- “The supreme fact is, to me, one other identify for God.” (XIV)
Warner feels certified to show God as part of Buddhism as a result of he has, he believes, had an expertise of God. One time when Warner was crossing a bridge in Tokyo (though he stresses that his expertise was exterior area and time) he skilled himself as being “unfold all through the universe and all through all of time.” It seems like a robust altered state of notion, though it might sound odd {that a} Buddhist — somebody working towards in a nontheistic faith, would interpret such an expertise in theistic phrases, which he does: “This was God. Is God. Will all the time be God,” and “I got here away from the expertise realizing sure issues for absolute reality. I do know now that God exists.”
Now, having an expertise is one factor, however having had experiences we wish to “clarify” them in a roundabout way, typically by way of our earlier beliefs and mindsets. In reality, Warner truly factors out, within the context of how non secular experiences reminiscent of this may be harmful, “It’s essential to work by quite a lot of your private shit earlier than you get into one thing like this, otherwise you’ll solely have the ability to expertise it by way of your personal private shit.”
So the query that arises for me, as a Buddhist who feels no have to interpret his personal experiences in theistic phrases, and with reluctance to be reductionist and psychological, is whether or not God is a part of Warner’s “shit” that he has not labored by. Apparently, evidently he had been looking for God by his Zen observe. For instance, “I received into [Zen] for a lot of different causes … however the largest one was that I wished to know if God actually existed.” So, it does sound somewhat like Warner had a pre-existing notion of God — wished to consider within the existence of God, in actual fact — went on the lookout for God in Zen (an unlikely venue, I’d have thought) after which ended up deciphering a robust expertise of nonduality by way of God.
There are clues within the e book suggesting why Warner felt the necessity to see his non secular quest by way of God. In discussing an early Christian idea that God is past ideas like existence and non-existence, Warner factors out:
“…so as to agree with the logic, you must first settle for that there’s something referred to as God who’s infinite and omniscient and transcendent and so forth. However what should you don’t consider in that within the first place? What should you’re coming to this dialogue from the standpoint that every one matter is actually lifeless and that consciousness is simply an accident arising from the motion of electrical energy within the cerebral cells of animals who assume far too extremely of their very own random mind farts?
So now we have a basic false dichotomy right here: There may be both a God, or we reside in a lifeless universe wherein consciousness is nothing greater than meaningless “mind farts.” God or meaninglessness. A few of us don’t really feel the should be trapped in that dichotomy and in reality see the Dharma as a center means — as offering a way of the life and the universe as containing which means with out recourse to the terminology of “God.” Actually the Buddha appeared to haven’t any want of such ideas, and I feel he knew a factor or two about his personal realization.
Equally we discover (on web page 188) “After we neglect God we deal with each other and the world we reside in as objects.” It is a basic argument: if we don’t consider in God we will’t be good. God or meaninglessness. And but many people — Buddhists, atheists — discover that we’re completely able to not treating others as objects. Lovingkindness and compassion are virtues that, in Buddhism, don’t depend on God. Morality in Buddhism doesn’t depend on God. In reality morality, in Buddhism, arises from the very construction of the thoughts, in that our struggling or lack of struggling rely on our volitions, and the ideas, phrases, and acts that spring from them. Thus, morality is intrinsic to the thoughts, and subsequently to the universe.
Warner apparently can not disengage life having which means, a way of the universe being alive, and morality from the idea of God. It’s not, subsequently, shocking that he went looking for God, nor that he discovered Him.
On the entire I discover Warner’s writing to be very fascinating and endearingly trustworthy. For instance he’ll let you know one thing about quantum physics after which say he doesn’t perceive it and so isn’t a great individual to clarify it. However typically his speak strikes me as lower than “straight,” and he repeatedly makes use of phrases suggesting that God is a longtime a part of Buddhism. It’s high quality when he says one thing like, “To me Buddhism is a option to method and perceive God with out coping with faith.” However then he’ll say one thing like “I feel it expresses the Zen Buddhist method to the matter of God very succinctly” (emphasis added). That Zen Buddhism has an method to the matter of God is a shock to me.
Equally:
“There isn’t any God and he’s all the time with you” could sound like a easy non sequitur or a typical pointless Zen riddle. However it expresses the Zen viewpoint about God very succinctly. Although what you consider as God can’t probably exist, there’s a actual non secular dimension to this world. There’s something that may be referred to as God. [Emphasis added.]
So once more now we have “the Zen viewpoint about God,” which appears to be suggesting that God is part of Zen Buddhism. This Zen viewpoint, we’re informed, is that “there’s a actual non secular dimension to this world” (which few would argue with), but additionally that “there’s something that may be referred to as God.” That there’s something that may be referred to as God just isn’t, to the very best of my information. part of conventional Zen educating, though Warner’s selection of phrases means that it’s.
And once more, he states that the e book is an “try and make the Zen method to the query of God understandable to a recent Western viewers steeped within the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions.” Not “one Zen Buddhist’s method to the query of God,” nor “my method to the query of God,” however “the Zen method to God.”
If it is a method for attempting to provide the impression that Zen (or Buddhism typically) has a place that’s favorable to God, then it’s one which I’m disturbed by. It strikes me as speak that’s the reverse of straight.
An analogous sample is present in Warner’s dialogue of Dogen’s Shobogenzo. At first now we have readability: “Dogen’s writing by no means mentions God particularly.” Then Warner states his contradictory opinion, making it clear that it’s an opinion, “Regardless of this, I consider that Dogen’s Buddhism instantly addresses questions concerning the nature of God.” That’s Warner’s perception. That’s high quality.
However then the slippery slope begins: “Each time I learn this chapter I are inclined to substitute the phrase God for inmo. I don’t know what else Dogen might probably be speaking about apart from God.” I don’t know any Japanese, however “inmo” (in different places I’ve seen it as “immo”) appears to be the Chinese language or Japanese translation of the Sanskrit “tāthatā,” which is often rendered as “suchness” — an odd-sounding phrase which means one thing like “the way in which issues are” or “actuality.” In a Buddhist context it by no means means something like “God.”
Then the momentum of our slippery slope grows: “it’s helpful to take a look at what Dogen wrote about his idea of God” (emphasis added). Now we’re being informed that Dogen has an idea of God, though he wrote about no such factor; he wrote about tāthatā, which Warner imagines should be God as a result of he doesn’t know what else Dogen might probably be speaking about. I suppose in case you have a hammer and are determined to make use of it, then all the things begins to seem like a nail.
Additionally:
That is the place [Dogen] begins to speak about God. He says that one other identify for “it” [i.e. “inmo/immo, or tathatha/suchness] is the “supreme fact of bodhi.” The phrase bodhi means “enlightenment” or “awakening.” Dogen says, “The state of affairs of this supreme fact of bodhi is such that even the entire universe in ten instructions is only a small a part of the supreme fact of bodhi: it could be that the reality of bodhi abounds past the universe.”
“That is the place he begins to speak about God.” I see no discuss God in that passage, or in anything Warner quotes from Dogen. I see some deep and intriguing discuss tāthatā and about “the supreme fact of bodhi.” However there’s nothing about God.
And later, “the Buddhist view of issues is that God is neither spirit nor matter.” I used to be unaware that Buddhism had such a view.
These statements appear to me to fly within the face of Warner’s claims to be delivering “straight speak.”
I’m not arguing, after all, that Buddhists, particularly in trendy occasions, have talked about God a method or one other. Warner offers examples, reminiscent of Nishijima Roshi (“God is the universe, the universe is God”), who has taught quite a lot of westerners and thus has needed to cope with questions on God. The expression “There isn’t any God and he’s all the time with you” comes finally from Sasaki Roshi, who has additionally spent a very long time (within the US) educating westerners. However these are responses to individuals attempting to reconcile their present perception in God with their explorations of the non-theism of Buddhism.
So I’m simply saying that God just isn’t a longtime a part of Buddhist educating — in actual fact is alien to Buddhist educating — however that Warner’s selection of phrases recommend he’s attempting to provide the impression that Dogen and different conventional Buddhist academics have a view of God. However even in discussing modern academics, Warner once more tends to insert God the place he hasn’t been talked about:
“In Kobun Chino’s phrases, ‘You might be held by the hand of absolutely the’: that’s, God holds his personal hand.” However Kobun’s assertion had nothing in any respect to do with God. He was once more speaking about tāhtatā, or one thing related.
Warner admits that his use of the time period “God” is problematic. He says greater than as soon as that it’s “harmful” (web page 175) and that it’s additionally divisive:
I feel it will be higher for us as Westerners to begin utilizing that harmful and divisive phrase God once we discuss what occurred to Buddha all these centuries in the past and what continues to occur to modern individuals who observe his means.
He additionally accepts that the time period God is eternalistic (that’s, it contradicts impermanence) and dualistic, however appears to see that — by some means — as a plus:
The truth that eternalism/dualism is enshrined by the phrase God is without doubt one of the many aspects of it that makes the phrase so helpful, I feel. The character of my observe has all the time been that at any time when I consider I’ve lastly found out what issues imply, there ’s all the time one other side that I’ve missed. Simply after I believed Buddhism was all about eliminating eternalism and dualism, there it was within the very material of the universe itself, one thing everlasting and dualistic.”
Why does Warner assume that this problematic, harmful, divisive, eternalistic, and dualistic language is helpful? Partly as a result of there’s an excessive amount of discuss enlightenment being one thing simple to realize, in distinction to “seeing God,” which isn’t simple to realize:
That is one motive that I’m attempting to introduce the phrase God into the Western Buddhist dialogue. The phrase enlightenment, or substitutes reminiscent of transformation, appears to recommend a psychological state that one may induce with some type of seminar or fancy method or medicine. If we begin speaking by way of “seeing God,” it’d turn out to be clearer to everybody that we’re speaking about one thing a lot grander and far more tough.
I feel that is an insightful identification of an issue, mixed with one of many worst conceivable recommendations for an answer. In conventional Christian phrases, “seeing God” was certainly a process for non secular heroes, who must go to excessive lengths (generally actually — they have been typically hermits) and decide to difficult and generally harmful practices (some saints starved themselves virtually to dying so as to see God). And Buddhist academics touting workshops that promise assist you to “notice a deep expertise of True Self” (In solely two days! For $5000!) are clearly presenting a deceptive account of what enlightenment is and the way it’s attained. However maybe somewhat than introducing an alien and problematic idea to Buddhism we needs to be attempting to advertise a greater understanding of enlightenment and of the issue of achieving it. My very own equal of “seeing God” is my quest to “know the thoughts of the Buddha,” which is one thing I see as a lifelong quest, and never one thing that may be performed in a two-day occasion on the Embassy Suites, LAX South (10:00 AM Monday to six:00 PM Tuesday).
I’m truly sympathetic to what Warner is attempting to realize. In addition to eager to get away from the concept that enlightenment is simple to realize, he needs individuals to flee the notion that the universe is “lifeless” and meaningless. He needs individuals to see the world as alive, and to have private reference to actuality. He needs individuals to see themselves as being vaster than they will probably think about. These are all wonderful goals. However you don’t want God for any of this. Buddhist teachings and observe already result in these views, and in reality it was presumably Warner’s Buddhist observe that provoked realization of connectedness, timelessness, and a profound sense of which means. However he’s sadly interpreted that have by way of (to make use of his expression) the “shit” that he hasn’t labored by about God.
For an instance of the universe as a loving, residing presence, right here’s one among my favourite quotes from Jan Chozen Bays’ e book, How one can Prepare a Wild Elephant:
Seeing with loving eyes just isn’t a one-way expertise, neither is it only a visible expertise. After we contact one thing with loving eyes, we carry a sure heat from our aspect, however we can also be stunned to really feel heat radiating again to us. We start to marvel, is all the things on the planet made of affection? And have I been blocking that out?
A way of the world being imbued with a loving presence just isn’t unusual once we observe the brahmaviharas which, sadly, are a facet of Buddhist observe that has been dropped by the Zen custom.
Or within the Indo-Tibetan custom now we have the educating of the universe because the manifestation of a primordial, residing actuality. Right here’s the Dalai Lama:
I perceive the Primordial Buddha, often known as Buddha Samantabhadra, to be the last word actuality, the realm of the Dharmakaya — the area of vacancy — the place all phenomena, pure and impure, are dissolved.
However His Holiness additionally clarifies: “It will be a grave error to conceive of [the Primordial Buddha] as an impartial and autonomous existence from beginningless time.” In different phrases don’t take into consideration this primordial actuality as a separate God. Really, that’s fairly just like what Warner says, however with out the problematic language. Which is my level; Buddhism already has it coated.
The Indo-Tibetan method is delicate as a result of it permits for us having a private relationship with actuality — a way that the universe is imbued with compassion and knowledge — however on the similar time it has a non-dualistic view. Because the Dalai Lama places it, “we don’t visualize this supply as a singular entity, however as the last word clear gentle of every being. We will additionally, on the idea of its pure essence, perceive this clear gentle to be the Primordial Buddha.” We will even really feel a powerful sense of private reference to the Dharmakaya (primordial actuality) because it manifests by the Sambhogakaya — the types we understand as Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, with whom we will have a private connection, all whereas not seeing them as separate from the character of our personal thoughts.
This will likely want some unpacking, and even some wrestle, for a lot of peple to grasp it, nevertheless it appears clear to me that Buddhism already has, in non-theistic phrases, what Warner sees as God, however with out utilizing the time period God.
I feel actual issues emerge once you attempt to pressure God language into Buddhism. Warner at one level says that God is an efficient time period to make use of for what Zen is about as a result of “shoving the phrase God right into a tidy mental container can be like attempting to shove a reside octopus right into a Kleenex field.” However shoving the phrase “God” into Buddhism is equally problematic.
One sensible drawback is that many individuals are in actual fact on the lookout for a non secular custom that doesn’t hinge on perception in a God, and shall be delay by God-talk.
One other is that there’s a severe hazard that after you pressure God into Buddhism, you now not have Buddhism, however some type of New Age quasi-Hinduism, and even one thing barely distinguishable from a number of the nicer types of Christianity.
And the very time period “God,” as Warner factors out, is divisive, dualistic, and harmful. He thinks it is a good factor for Buddhism; I don’t. And when you begin pondering of your non secular quest by way of eager to know “what God needs from you” (the title of one of many chapters) you’ve opened the way in which to some harmful delusions.
Regardless of my many reservations, there have been issues I appreciated about this e book. I might write so much about themes he raised, however I’ve already gone on longer than I’d supposed. Brief model: Brad Warner is a humorous and fascinating instructor. He’s endearingly self-deprecating. There are some nice discussions concerning the nature of religion, concerning the should be prepared for awakening, concerning the nature of time, and concerning the issues of translation. Having learn his e book I undoubtedly wish to hang around with Dogen’s Shobogenzo.
However on the entire, the very last thing I feel Western Buddhism wants is the intrusion of God.