This is posted from the Disqus discussion boards, with a few modifications, in answer to a thread inquiring about what spending a day with God would be like. I wrote:
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From the Eastern/mystical perspective, I don’t have or believe in a creator-deity. I do have certain functional equivalents of God, as defined in the global mystical literature, i.e., God as Ultimate, Absolute, Bodhi, the Tao, the Sacred, the Ground of Being, the Dharmakaya, Buddha-Mind, Nirvana, the Unborn-the Unconditioned, Peace, Silence, etc.
From a more Western-philosophical perspective, I am a Panentheist (not Pantheist) – for whom “God” or “the Spirit” is real but is not a creator. The universe has its existence IN (“EN”) the God – or the Divinity in Which/Whom we move and live and have our being (as Luke-Acts portrays St. Paul’s panentheistic preaching).
Because my God-definition excludes the notion of God as a creator, I do not have a theological bone to pick with God for the simple, primary reason that God is not responsible for the existence, behavior, and maintenance of a universe that “He” did not create to begin with.
That is: God does not intervene with miraculous manipulations, God does not judge or condemn, God does not apologize for a universe that God had no hand in creating.
That is, I have no complaints to make, no gripes to air, but only gratefulness and gratitude.
Gratitude, but for what? For God’s unimpeded light, infinite compassion and infinite wisdom, based not on philosophy or doctrine, but rather upon personal experience.
My personal faith is that of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism (Shin Buddhism). For we “Shinners”, “God” as ultimate reality, the Unborn, the Unconditioned is expressed in-and-as Amida Buddha.
Not a creator, a judge, or an intervenor, Amida Buddha rather represents our own Buddha-Nature realized and dwelling in a perfect state called “the Pure Land”. What Amida is, we shall become, through His freely-granted gift of Shinjin, or perfect faith. A faith which is deemed “perfect” for the simple, crucial reason that we ourselves did not design it. It is the transcendent gift of Amida – “the Raft from the Other Shore” – whose sudden sharp arrival is redolent of otherworldly “fragrances of Light”, unlike the earthly light with which our physical eyes are familiar.
Moreover, there is not much of an adherent-Amida “wall of separation”. The only real difference is that while I am a deluded being led by blind passions (a “bombu”), Amida is already a celestial, primal Buddha, whose earthly adherents are – as of now, temporarily – only on the Path. But once we pass into the Pure Land state, our own Buddha-Nature will come to fruition and we ourselves will become Buddhas. We become like Amida Himself. This may sound spectacular, but it is “merely” the fulfillment of the basic Mahayanist “aspiration toward Buddhahood”.
Because of this blessed situation, I don’t really feel an insecure, pressing, or desperate need to “walk and talk” with my Absolute/”God”, for the simple reason that the Buddha and I are already united, and because ultimately I will become a Buddha myself. The walking and talking come naturally. We Shin people do not worship what we already are in potential, and we do not worship what we will become. We revere Amida Buddha for His grace and his role as life-vivifying Savior.
In this sense, Shin adherents are Amida’s “little brothers and sisters”, walking the Path set by Amida himself eons ago when he was the wandering, Dharma-seeking monk Dharmakara in a dimension that was perhaps far removed and probably quite different from our own.
Walking with my “older brother” Amida Buddha every day, I can only repeat Jodo Shinshu’s primary recitation of sheer gratitude:
“Namo Amida Buddha.”
“I take refuge in Amida Buddha.”
In that phrase resides my entire, daily interrelation on the Enlightenment Path with my Absolute,my inspiration, my salvation and my fully-realized “elder brother”.
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