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Buddhism is a nontheistic tradition. All schools of Buddhism recognize three attributes of existence: anatman, dukha, and anitya. Anatman is the absence of self, soul, self. Dukha is dissatisfaction. Anitya — impermanence, movement. If a being exhibits these three attributes, then it exists in the Buddhist sense of conditioned reality. That is, there cannot be a deity that is unchangeable, permanent, immobile, self-sufficient, not experiencing dissatisfaction, independent of the movement of the world. Deities, beings, and spirits in Buddhism are distinguished by the shells in which consciousness is embodied. After death, a person's consciousness can be reincarnated in the form of a deity, or a spirit, or an animal. It depends on the accumulated karmic merit. Roughly speaking: how many buttons you sewed to your consciousness during your life, and it will be fastened to this form after death. The most valuable thing is to incarnate not in the form of a deity, but in the form of a person, since this form is best suited for becoming a Buddha. The Buddha is not a deity, but the highest stage of human development, at which consciousness ceases to exist in the conditions of a causal process and reveals an unconditioned, absolute reality.
Of course not. The very belief in Buddhist philosophy can no longer be considered atheism, because believing in Buddhism, we believe in karma, in endless cycles of rebirth and that for bad deeds, the universe itself will punish us by rebirthing us into a lower being. I don't think an atheist believes in an infinite cycle of rebirths, or in the existence of the soul in principle.
A Buddhist must be an a-theist. When a person fixes his attention on an image, he creates its “shadow” in space. The time of existence of this “shadow” in space depends on the strength and duration of concentration of attention on the object. If a lot of people concentrate their attention on the image, the image becomes a huge shadow, and begins its independent existence as an energy formation, in which the energy of consciousness, imagination is invested, which is undesirable, since it eventually becomes a vampire…
If an atheist is a person who believes in God, then all Buddhists are atheists.�
Yes, there is a description in this philosophy of the existence of the realm of the gods, and that a being who has earned good merit can be reborn in this realm, but this realm does not intersect with people. Accordingly, there is no worship of these deities.
As for bodhisattvas like Tara, Chenrezi, they are not deities. These are simply the tantric aspects of our mind and are used in meditation. And they are also not worshipped by Buddhists, unlike Hindu deities, as mentioned above. And it should be understood that they are just a projection of our mind. Like Buddhism itself. This is just a concept that will allow you to achieve Buddhahood.
When it comes to matters of faith, dharma followers have a generally ambiguous attitude to it. Whether it's a belief in God or the supernatural. The Buddha himself said before he died: “Don't take for granted what you are being told, even if the Buddha himself said it. Check everything on your own experience.”
Here it is necessary to specify what is meant by atheism.
If atheism is seen as a denial of the existence of a single creator god, yes. But this view of atheism seems to me too crude and unambiguous.
If atheism is understood as a denial of organized religion, then here is the problem::
Buddhism is basically a religion. Just like Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. But! Buddhism appeared in the West in the XX century and the appearance of information about it coincided with the spread of mysticism in the late XIX-early XX century,and later-with the birth in the second third of the century of such a mass phenomenon as the New Age, which, according to the British religious scholar Michael York, appeared in the 60s as part of the hippie subculture,�
Later, in the nineties and noughties, the term Spirituality (New Age/Holistic Spirituality) became more often used, which was perceived as an integral part of modernity. For example, a group of researchers from the University of Lancaster under the leadership of Paul Heelas (Paul Heelas) in the early noughties conducted a study in the framework of the “Kendall Project”, the results of which were published the famous work: Heelas, Woodhead. 2005. The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion Is Giving Way to Spirituality. For the study, a small Northern English town of Kendall was chosen, where Hilas and his graduate students copied even all yoga trainers and practicing homeopaths. As a result, it turned out, for example, that half of the (!) All the shops on Kendal's main shopping street sell Holistic Spirituality products in one way or another. Earlier, in one of his articles, Hilas called Spirituality a post-modern religion of the consumer society.�
This very Spirituality is now everywhere and in everything, everyday life is saturated with it and it can be described as a certain behavioral pattern used by many people to adapt to the stressful conditions of late/post-modernity. For example, modern society preaches extreme individualism and the cult of personal success, while Spirituality is based on the cult of self-development. That is why it is so popular in business contexts: Spirituality in Business courses have long been part of MBA programs in serious Western business schools.
So, actually to Buddhism: Spirituality has nothing to do with religion, from the word at all. Moreover, it tends to be hostile to organized religion, in large part because it is an easier form of secularization. In addition, Spirituality parasitizes traditional religions, using certain techniques (yoga in Hinduism, Kabbalah in Judaism, etc.) not as religious, but precisely as “useful for life” psychopractics, essentially rejecting the mother religions themselves both in content and form.�
Buddhism turned out to be a religion almost completely absorbed by Spirituality. This happened precisely because (to return to what I started with) I became known in the West at the very moment when Spirituality, in principle, began to emerge. Who popularized Buddhism in our country? The mystic psychoanalyst Jung, the beatnik Kerouac, and the Japanese theosophist Daisetsu Suzuki. That is, Buddhism was initially sold to the Western consumer as the “mystical wisdom of the East” and not as a religion. As a result, even religious scholars have rather wild ideas about Buddhism, since they study not “normative” or “bookish” Buddhism, but the folk beliefs of the Buryats or Kalmyks, and on this basis draw conclusions on a cosmic scale that Buddhism cannot be called a single religion, because they are just very different beliefs that are very different from each other. Although if they were to compare Russian folk religiosity and some Mexican cult of holy death, they would also probably say that Christianity as an integral system does not exist. Thank God at least that doesn't occur to them.
And so today in Moscow and St. Petersburg there are tiny, up to several dozen people, groups of religious Buddhists and there is a huge number of “interested”, “like Buddhist philosophy”. Many of these interested people have lived for several months in monasteries, read books, and communicated with Eastern meditation teachers, but in fact, according to their worldview, they are ordinary newagers. Everyone needs meditation. But, as the head of the Moscow Theravada Buddhist community rightly pointed out, when people see a “Vipassana” poster on the fence, the crowd immediately breaks down. But if there instead of Vipassana write “Morality”, “Generosity”, “Compassion” – no one really will come most likely.
Something like that…
Hypothetically, it can.
In Indian “classical” Buddhism, deities are not worshipped, although they are not denied.
Something like “they're on their own we're on our own”.
If a person is an atheist, then in principle (precisely within the framework of Buddhism) it doesn't change anything.
Karma, reincarnation, etc. – this is Hinduism, not Buddhism, in Buddhism they are just as much not denied as Hindu deities, but they do not play a special role.
In Tibetan Buddhism – can call himself an atheist too, but in fact Tibetan Buddhism is (among other things) the worship of bodhisattvas, who, although not called deities, but perform the same functions of the pantheon, they are also worshipped, the same blessings, etc. etc. And how is it better or worse to believe in Tara than to believe in Lakshmi? For me, it's the same, only in profile. However, there are not one but four Tibetan Buddhisms (at least the main branches), and the attitude to Bodhistattvas is very different. And if in a good way there is a topic for a separate article for many pages.
In Chinese Chan Buddhism – easily. And it is very likely that a Chan Buddhist, when examined in detail, will turn out to be an atheist, well, maybe with an admixture of ancestral worship (and this is not quite a religion).
And there are other branches of Buddhism.