What is God?

“What is God?” Ask many a Western Buddhist this question and they will respond with, “a delusion”, or “imaginary”. They will continue, “There is no God in Buddhism. There is not even room for the belief of God in Buddhism.” - but I’m not so sure about that.

Before someone can deny there is room for God in Buddhism, define what God is. What comes to mind to most from these three little letters is a very specific form of God, probably owing due to the influence of the Abrahamic religions within the Western world - but is that a fair assessment?

Yes, they claim, because these religions are the biggest religions. Sure to some extent that may be correct, but the two largest religions in this world got there by coercion and proselytism. The two biggest religions, as we know, are Christianity, and then Islam. The forms of God most people in the West are used to understanding are Christian (specifically Catholic and Protestant forms) and from a Biblical reading of the Tanakh (what is known as the “Old Testament”) and taking everything at face value, ignoring some of the great teachings that there are within the Talmud and the way Jewish theology can be interpreted by intelligent Jewish scholars. Some may also be aware of the beliefs of Mormonism, and even still, Islam.

Yet what do all of them have in common? They are all Abrahamic religions: they all have Abraham as a prophet. He is the last uniting point of their religions, and their theologies tend to be rather similar to one another.

For example, all of the above mentioned religions have:

• An incredibly personal God
• Prophets
• A God who rewards and punishes
• A God who is omni-everything: omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and so on
• Dualistic views
• A God who is willing to go to incredible lengths to do things: for example, the story of Noah’s ark and Sodom and Gomorrah, we have a God who is willing to destroy whole cities and even the whole world.

Within Islam and Christianity, we also have a God who is willing to send people to Hell for not believing in the message brought down. Christians tend to believe that God--yes--God--incarnated on Earth to be killed by people as a ransom for sin.

This God appears to have created people effectively to punish them unless they deny themselves of some pretty normal things, if we takes the Bible at face value and takes say, Islamic or Christian traditional theology, an entity who has made us only to worship him or suffer.

In my opinion only, of course, such concepts of God would go against the spirit of the Dharma as taught by Shakyamuni Buddha. Not only do they go against the spirit of the Dharma that Budda taught, but they also go against natural laws and common sense. So, in some ways, yes, there is no room for such a concept of God in Buddhism in my opinion--much less as the Supreme God, and I most certainly do not believe in such a type of God.

However, there are more views of God than just that of the Abrahamic---the traditional, personal and judgemental monotheistic concepts. We have the concepts of God brought forth within the Dharmic paths such as Sikhism and Hinduism--and different concepts of how God relates to the world such as dvaita (dualism), advaita (nondualism), dvaitadvaita, bhedabheda, and many more. Of concepts of God, there are monotheism, polytheism, Deism, polydeism, panentheism, pantheism, dystheism/maltheism, henotheism, and monolatry --- we have personal and impersonal conceptions of God, and even the transpersonal one at our disposal. We have beliefs of eternal gods, gods who emanate from the universe, the universe that emanates from god, God who IS the universe, a God who does not intervene in creation, who has died, who watches and ones who do not watch.

So why do people automatically shift to the Abrahamic, “do as I say or I’ll beat you up” concept of God? Simply, their upbringing, I guess. It seems that people often struggle to separate the God of their youth from other god concepts, so any belief in God seems to be judged like this one. That very word, God, brings up the concept of God that many held in their youth: the Cosmic Sugar Daddy, that man with the beard on a cloud throwing thunderbolts at bad people, whilst more or less bringing candy to his young followers.

What is to say that God is not an impersonal, Cosmic force? Does such a thing then become not-God? It seems as though many people hold a problem with calling an impersonal force as God, and say it is playing a game of semantics. But who, really, is playing semantics? Are they playing semantics by holding such a narrow definition of the word “God”, or is the one who believes God to be something else playing semantics by holding a far too broad definition of the word God? The claim that it’s wishy-washy and useless to use the term God for anything that isn’t a sky daddy is quite a narrow claim, in my eyes.

Is there room in Buddhism for a panentheistic view of God? Possibly. I think there is, depending on how such a kind of God is perceived: if one has more mystical inclinations, then it would not be quite as difficult. If one looks at some of the Mahayana sutras, some of them seem to be readable readable from a panentheistic perspective; the Kulayarāja Tantra and the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra immediately come to mind.


"I am the core of all that exists. I am the seed of all that exists. I am the foundation of all that exists. I am the root of existence. I am 'the core', because I contain all phenomena. I am 'the seed', because I give birth to everything. I am 'the cause', because all comes forth from me. I am 'the trunk', because the ramificationsof every event sprout from me. I am 'the foundation', because all abides in me. I am called 'the root', because I am everything.”
    --- Published as The Supreme Source, tr. by Adriano Clemente [1999] et al.

This is a text that is greatly respected within the Tibetan Dzogchen school of thought. If such a text, with its explicit teachings on what is panentheism can be accepted by the majority, then how do we know that there are or are not other texts which hint at there being some kind of God-entity or God-state? How do we know that it does not use superfluous language to avoid the anthromorphisation and personification of this entity? There are many scriptures out there, far too many for me to look through in my life, and so many different conceptualizations of the Divine.


So, what do I, as a positive Buddhist, think of God as? Of course, this is only my own view, but it is like this: To me, God is not a being - not a cosmic sugar daddy with a temper. If we were to play with terms, God is a verb, not a noun, and is present in everything within the universe, but transcends all of existence. It is genderless, and neither personal nor impersonal but trans-personal, beyond form and no-form and all dualities. I see God the way some would see Brahman, or the Tao: something indescribable.

Some may say, “But Keshin, that is not a God!”, but I disagree. It’s not my problem if people have such narrow views on what God actually is.

Hoo, boy. There’s a lot there. I think I’ll cut it short, now. I’ll try and come back to this another time, or cover it in other, somewhat related posts.