"God"

Dear Dr Wong

Do you have explanation for this?
"You find God the moment you realize that you don't need to seek God." ~Eckhart Tolle

Metta
Heng

Dear Bro,

the problem is the word "God"!

The God-Being

The cultural association is when this word is used, it refers to some Old Man who looks like Zeus staring down from the sky. If you did not know, the image of Zeus was the prototype 'model' for many2 paintings.

So the word in popular thinking refers to a Being, a Person with a Personality who can be pleased, happy, angry, vengeful or simply bored.

So if you are to go around looking for such a Being, then depending on your culture and religious background, you will find him in that particular context.

The Impersonal World of Physics

Then there is the "God" that Einstein referred to when he said that "God does not play dice";

That almost sounds like Einstein is attributing the laws of the universe to a god of some sort. But what type of god? A personal deity or some impersonal force?

To a Colorado banker who wrote and asked him the God question, Einstein responded:

“I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals or would sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. My religiosity consists of a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we can comprehend about the knowable world. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.”

The most famous Einstein pronouncement on God came in the form of a telegram, in which he was asked to answer the question in 50 words or less. He did it in 32:

“I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.”
this is NOT a person or a being but the impersonal way that nature works that exists above time constraints.

In a letter, dated June 14, 1945, sent from the USS Bougainville in the Pacific Ocean, a Navy staff Raner recounts a conversation he had on the ship with a Jesuit-educated Catholic officer who claimed that Einstein converted from atheism to theism when he was confronted by a Jesuit priest with three irrefutable syllogisms: “The syllogisms were: A design demands a designer; The universe is a design; therefore there must have been a designer.”

Raner countered the Catholic officer by noting that cosmology and evolutionary theory adequately explain most apparent design in the world, “but even if there was a ‘designer,’ that would give only a re-arranger, not a creator; and again assuming a designer, you are back where you started by being forced to admit a designer of the designer etc. etc. Same as the account of the earth resting on an elephant’s back — elephant standing on a giant turtle; turtle on turtle on turtle, etc.”

At this point in his life Einstein was world-famous and routinely received hundreds of such letters, many from prominent scholars and scientists, so for him to write a lowly ensign aboard a ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean reveals how much this story got his goat. On July 2, 1945, Einstein fired back:

"I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. Your counter-arguments seem to me very correct and could hardly be better formulated. It is always misleading to use anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with things outside the human sphere — childish analogies. We have to admire in humility and beautiful harmony of the structure of this world — as far as we can grasp it. And that is all".

Four years later, in 1949, Raner wrote Einstein again, asking for clarification: “Some people might interpret (your letter) to mean that to a Jesuit priest, anyone not a Roman Catholic is an atheist, and that you are in fact an orthodox Jew, or a Deist, or something else. Did you mean to leave room for such an interpretation, or are you from the viewpoint of the dictionary an atheist; i.e., ‘one who disbelieves in the existence of a God, or a Supreme Being?’”
Einstein responded on September 28, 1949:

"I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being".


let us now reflect on a lesson by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu

..the word "Buddha" in everyday language refers to the historical Enlightened Being, Gotama Buddha.


... in terms of Dhamma language, however, the word "Buddha" refers to the Truth which the historical Buddha realized and taught,
namely the Dhamma itself.

The Buddha said
"One who sees the Dhamma sees the Tathagatha. One who sees the Tathagatha sees the Dhamma.
One who sees not the Dhamma, though grasping at the robe of the Tathagatha, cannot be said to have seen the Tathagatha. "


..so in Dhamma language, the Buddha is the one and the same as that Truth by virtue of which He became the Buddha, and anyone who sees that Truth can be said to have seen the true Buddha .

To see just His physical body would not be to see the Buddha at
all and would bring no real benefit.


Again, the Buddha said, "The Dhamma and the Vinaya .... shall be your teacher when I have passed away."

Thus the real "Buddha" has not passed away, has not ceased
to exist.
What ceased to exist was just the physical body, the outer shell..

The real teacher, that is the Dhamma-Vinaya is still with us.

......The Buddha of everyday language is the physical man,

the "Buddha" of Dhamma language is the Dhamma itself,

which made him Buddha.


...the word "Dhamma" was used to refer to all of the intricate and involved things that go to make up what we call "Nature".

The word embraces:

1. Nature itself
2. The Law of Nature
3. The duty of each human being to act in accordance with the Law of Nature
4. The benefits to be derived from acting in accordance with the Law of Nature

It does not simply refer to books .. or the voices of Preachers.

...........In everyday language, "God" refers to a celestial being
with various creative powers.

The "God" of Dhamma language is rather different.

It is a profound and hidden power, which is neither human being, nor celestial being, nor any other kind of being.


It has no individuality or self, and it is impersonal.
It is natural and intangible.
It is what we call the Law of Nature, for this Law is responsible
for creation and for the coming into existence of all beings..
Natural Law governs all things.
Natural Law has power over all things.

Hence in Dhamma language, the word "God" means among other things, the Law of Nature, what Buddhists call "Dhamma".

Dhamma, just that one single word, implies all of the Law of Nature.

So Dhamma is the Buddhist "God".


Extracted from "Two kinds of language: Everyday language and
Dhamma language "

a talk given on 8 Oct 1966

............................



So Bro Heng, when one stops looking for that Personal Big Brother "God", and opens one's mind, one will see the Truths of Nature ALL AROUND us; Impermanence, DisSatisfaction, NonSelf and Dependent Origination.

Stop seeking for a Being, Open one's Mind and Truth as in Dhamma, as in the Principles of Physics is ALL AROUND for us to see and know!