Islaam for a Buddhist

I am not sure what Buddhist school you belong to Vershaken nor why you call your a Samurai? Buddhism is a non-theistic religion, that is to say we do not see a personal God looking over us, punishing us or rewarding us. This does not mean we do not believe there is a higher reality to existence but that it's not just limited to the concept of a Creator God. Now I am familiar with Islamic teachings to some extent having studied them in college from Moslem professors. I have respect for Islam and Muslim people, just as I do of Christians even though I know that both traditions harbor a few heretics and lunatics in their midst. How could any religion with a billion adherents not have a few bizarre people and bizarre belief systems. Vershaken,you do not seem to have a real strong grasp of Buddhism or a least have not exposed it in your posts. For my Muslim friends the reason Buddhas don't believe in creation or a creator is that we hold to the doctrine of interdependent origination. That is to say that no individual or entity exists independent of the whole but is affected by an effects of whole. Individual things we perceive seem to have absolute identities,saparate form each other because of the limits of our perceptual apparatus our senses.The boudaries of reality are created by epistimological limits. Therefore for us, creation is a myth created by the limits of our mind and senses. There are some direct parallels in quantum physics with Buddhist thought, for instance in the idea of an electron being in all places of its orbit but in no particular place at the same time is a kind of transcendental conundrum,which Buddhism would understand. Now I'm not trying to argue these points to convince anyone of that perspective, I'm simply stating them for a point of elucidation. From a Buddhist perspective the rewards and punishments for ignorant distructive action, or positive kindly action, are in direct proportion to the actions. For every action there is a perfectly proportional reaction. Therefore an eternal hell or heaven based on the actions of an individual is inconsistent with Buddhist thought. Buddhism believes in multiple realms of existence and reincarnation, to which a person is born according to the effects of his karma. I have a close friend who is a Druze and his people also believe in reincarnation. As a Zen student I find many parallels in the Sufi tradition and I see kindred spirits there.

I believe in my studies I was told once that the Prophet enjoined people of the book Moslems Christians and Jews to compete only in righteousness. Please correct me if I'm wrong but this is a wonderful teaching. On the question of shirk or idolatry. Buddhists look at statues as merely religious art and do not expect them to grant favors hear prayers or do anything more than collect dust. There is a famous story of a Zen sage who took a wooden statue of Buddha down from an altar on a cold night, set it on fire, and warmed his rear end t. He said to the shocked the monks" now it's finally of good use", because if you think Buddha is somewhere outside your mind you are an idolater. Vershaken if you are interested in parallels between Moslem thought and Buddhism please read the works of Indries Shah.

May all beings attain happiness!

I am sure it seems that way my friend. I am not here to convince anyone of the validity of a Buddhist worldview, I just thought that you might like to know a little bit about Buddhism. For me the idea of creation and the Creator the stands outside of it doesn't make sense. If all things need a creator that it would follow logically that the creator needs a creator ad infinitum. To stop at any one point and say this is the final creator seems arbitrary. It is like the Big Bang theory they say everything goes back to this infinitely small mass which exploded and then created the universe. Well were that small mass come from? As I explained before we believe it is a finite nature of man's mind that he can only see things in a linear respective this creates that etc. However,we have found out that things are incredibly interconnected the simplist example of this is ecology. The creatures affect the forest the forest affects the creatures the mountains affect the forest and the forest affects the mountains as the forest creates climate, and the climate affects the mountains forest and the creatures.

We would be different from science however in that the mechanical reductionist model of the universe sees consciousness as an accident a phenomenon of matter. We would hold that matter is an expression of Consciousness. The two are inseparable like a drop of water is the ocean, the ocean is the drop of water, the Ocean from only perspective determines what you call it. Another example would be light theory, some say that light is made up of particles that it is partculate. A competing theory says that light comes in waves that is its waveform. All those bees are totally opposing and contradictory positions you can do experiments in which the light will behave as either waveform or particlate. Therefore it is now been posited that the person doing the experiment actually participates in the experiment in regards to its nature and outcome. This seems absurd and yet it is the case. Therefore the creative energy is an inherent part of existence itself not separate from it. For a Buddhist to attain enlightenment is to completely surrender one's self and one's ego to that Consciousness.

In order to do that there were certain guidelines given such as the noble eightfold path, right speech, right livelihood, right action and so on.I was brought up in the background of Northern Ireland's ongoing religious strife. I was a naturaly a spiritual person who felt the presence of the divine in everyday things, which is not to say every day things are the divine. I read all the Scriptures and the old and New Testament that I found it more disquieting than spiritual. I became a seeker fairly early before I even left high school. When I entered college I studied Islam and the Koran  in translation of course but there were scholars available to me you could read it and even do some exegesis from the Arabic. I found it to be more consistent logically then the Judeo-Christian tradition. However to me and I don't mean to be offensive but the idea that a Semitic tribal God rules the universe, and had many of the more immature traits of human beings such as wath, anger,jealousy and so on to be grossly simplistic.. I

 am a father not perhaps a perfect one but I do not expect my children to worship me and not have minds of their own. Therefore I found it illogical that the Source of Being for the Universe had many of the crueler and insecure aspects of human nature.

An all-knowing all-powerful God who condemns punishes or rewards mortals when he already knows what they're going to do and preordaines it, seems more than a little bit inconsistent. Since then however I have been given a much more profound level of teaching upon these matters,by a Sufi Master of great wisdom.