No Stupid Questions

May I ask how do you handle big and/or cosmological differences? Or do you focus on the advaita one’s? As far as big cosmological issues go, I really don’t handle them. Haha. I just sort of ignore things about gods or heavens and hells, and chalk them up to mostly metaphor, and the ways in which people try to understand the world around them, or the ways in which they try to impart wisdom to those who might not understand another method. I don’t know how literally I believe really anything, but especially issues like cyclical time, or Agni the deva of fire. Given what you’ve said, I’m assuming you probably also don’t take a literal view of the various gods, demons, heavens and hells that are present in a lot of Buddhist thought.

Where do you land on rebirth/reincarnation? Also, what branch of Buddhism do you practice?

Coming from Christianity, thinking there was only god, I was slow to adapt Buddhist cosmology. My current thinking is more orthodox. I think most cosmology makes sense to me. Also, Buddhism doesn't really make sense without rebirth. The whole issue is that death is not the end. If death is the end, Buddhism doesn't need to exist. Furthermore, while Christianity caused a lot of confusion as I began to question, Buddhist ideas such as impermanence, emptiness, and interdependence appear quite logical to me.

So, my personal idea of Brahman is less creator deity and more universal constant. If there is truly not-two, then all things are brahman, all things are in common. I don’t see brahman as a distinct, physical god, but as the collection of the entirety of existence. Pantheism, perhaps panentheism depending on the day.

I wonder how you would view this after reading further about emptiness?

From what I’ve read, I also quite like the three marks of existence (though I knew them as the Universal Truths) and the four noble truths. I don’t know as much about Buddhism as I’d like, though, and I need to learn more. It’s honestly just a weird fluke that I ended up with more knowledge of hinduism than of buddhism, considering how much more popular buddhism is in the states. I’ve always enjoyed learning about other traditions, especially ones that are very foreign to my current understanding. I had just come off a kick on Norse Paganism when I started reading about Advaita, and it just… clicked. Never really looked back. I hadn’t done the same with Buddhism because I mistakenly thought I knew what it was all about. Found out later I had very little understanding of Buddhism, and I’ve only just recently started really looking into it.

That's kind of how it happened with me for Buddhism!

Less that one is my core and I’m studying things around it, and more that I am trying to study as many as possible objectively, and attempting to find my own core. As current, Advaita is the closest I have to come to expressing what I have always believed internally, and consequently gives me a language to explain how I feel about the universe, and a framework to help understand things that I currently do not. I’m not dogmatic about it, though, and am willing to grow, adapt and change my views when new information or traditions are presented.

I like this way of looking at it. I also find Confucianism, Daoism, and Shintoism interesting but to me Buddhism makes the most sense and is my core too.

I have! They’re quite good. John Green is doing a religions series on Crash Course, and I’m spamming the comments on each episode asking him to do an episode specifically about nonduality. Haha

That sounds good. Thanks for sharing.

So, there’s nothing specific, for me, about having Shiva at center. It’s less about the image that people hold of the godhead, and more just another tradition attempting to explain nonduality, and the nuances of it that make it interesting. I use Advaita as a shorthand to explain what I believe, because, again, its quite close. But ultimately, its nonduality that is most essential, so just about any nondualist tradition is of interest to me. Kashmiri Shaivism and Advaita have a lot of difference… Most of which I don’t understand well enough to explain. Haha.

How would this nondualism relate to emptiness? In Buddhist emptiness everything is emptiness of ultimate form. Might consider this also a form of nondualism..

I will check out that book! It can be sort of… Disconcerting, realizing the difference between the religious texts or a philosophical tradition and the actual lived religion of the people. I remember when I made one of my first Hindu friends, and I was so excited to chat about nondualism, cyclical time, and other sort of deep cuts from people like Shankara and Ramakrishna. And they were like “I do pooja, and I don’t really think about it otherwise” And I realized Hindus were much like Christians in that regard. Haha. Probably the same for just about any religion outside of tiny cults.

Haha, that's a funny story. That's pretty much all my early Buddhist interactions as well. Expecting them to know some deep question but them just being like I read this sutra daily and that's it.

Plenty of the nondualists/advaitins I’ve spoken with do not really understand Brahman through the lens of a creator god. Brahman, to my understanding, isn’t generally viewed as a creator deity, but more as universal existence itself. The creator deity in Hinduism is (at least, in most branches) is Brahma, not Brahman. The Hindu trimurti is Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva. Brahma creates, Vishnu sustains, and Shiva destroys. But Brahma and Brahman are not the same thing, just a similar sounding word. There are two major concepts of Brahman, Saguna and Nirguna. Nirguna Brahman is the formless, atributeless, unexplainable, ineffable divine existence that permeates all. It is the paramatman, the soul from which all souls spring (though, even that kind languages implies a duality. Better to say the soul from which all souls appear to spring). Saguna Brahman is sort of like philosophical training wheels. Saguna Brahman is basically up to the believers choice. You can choose to imagine Saguna Brahman as Vishnu, or Shiva, or your own mother if you’re so inclined. It is simply an aspect of Brahman, the true Nirguna Brahman, that allows you to focus your mind until you are ready to understand the true nature of Brahman as Nirguna Brahman.

That's very interesting!