No God

Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation. ~Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking

January 8, 1942, Oxford, United Kingdom - March 14, 2018, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Reality

Words and thoughts are not clung to as ultimate arbiters of reality.

~Thomas Cleary, in Entry Into the Inconceivable

The Universe

The universe is beyond views, without emotions, profusely evolving myriad of forms.

~Thomas Cleary, in Entry Into the Inconceivable

The Lion's Roar

The ultimate realm of truth is inconceivable.

~The Avatamsaka Sutra

Think Rationally

Just a Trick of Thought

Life, the universe, and everything are exactly what they are. When we think we're trying to understand them, what we usually end up doing instead is trying to find foolproof ways to describe them to ourselves rather than just fully experiencing them. We try to make symbolic representations of them in our brains. But it doesn't work because the representation in never the thing it represents.

Dogen and other Buddhist teachers suggest, instead, allowing the mind to be like a mirror that reflects clearly the world it encounters without trying to reduce it into something else. If you can do this, you start to see that the division you think exists between yourself and the rest of the universe is really just a trick of thought. It has some usefulness for communication purposes, so that you can describe that one unit of the universe you image yourself to be. But it's not real. The universe is more you than the "you" that you've created could ever be.

~Brad Warner, in It Came From Beyond Zen

Reality

Reality isn't some pristine thing far off in outer space where there is no doubt or anger or greed or delusion. Reality is what you are living in at the very moment when you doubt you are living in reality.

~Brad Warner, in It Came From Beyond Zen!

Reality

For a follower of the Mahayana path, nothing is more important than enlightenment. Unless we realize the nature of reality, we remain imprisoned by our delusions and unable to help others do the same. But the nature of reality is simply our own nature.

~Red Pine, in his commentary on The Platform Sutra

Truth

Maat

The concept and philosophy of Maat is perhaps the oldest recorded understanding of righteous action. The concept of Maat, when followed and understood to its pinnacle leads to the spiritual evolution of individual Human Beings as well as the Society which incorporates it.

The concept of Maat originated in ancient Egypt prior to 5,500 bce.

The philosophy is symbolized and personified by a goddess said to be the daughter of Ra, the Supreme Being and Creator of the Cosmos.

Maat symbolizes and personifies Truth, Justice, Order, Reality, the Functioning of the Cosmos.

Those who live their lives based on Truth and Justice and Reality will be in harmony with Maat and thus the Universe Itself.

In this harmony, true happiness is to be found.

Those who act and live in discord with Maat will experience the consequences of that disharmony as guided by the Law of Cause and Effect.

Knowledge Over Superstition

As It Really Is

                               In this world "as it really is"
                               there is neither self nor other-than-self.

                                                                  ~Hsin Hsin Ming 

Reality

One should note, the understanding of Reality must come through personal experience. It cannot come by hearsay or the opinion of others.

No Causeless Cause

No ultimate origin of anything can be found.

Truth

In "The Shorter Discourse on the Dead End," the Buddha makes an astonishing revelation: he does not claim anything to be "the truth." This was undoubtedly a surprising thing to assert, given the context of religious debates and competing claims of truth. The declaration can be seen as one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Buddha's teachings. It also raises the question, if the Buddha does not teach the truth, what does he teach?

In accord with not teaching "the truth," in this twelfth poem [of the Atthakavagga] the Buddha offers no religious doctrine or teachings of his own. When asked whose claims are true, the Buddha avoids answering the question. Instead he respond by explaining that people "make their very own view to be true." In other words, the people who argue are not debating the truth, they are quarreling over what they have constructed as true.

Instead of arbitrating whose religious claims are true, the Buddha comments on the absurdity of how some people argue about the truth. Everyone would be equally a fool if the only criterion for being a fool is not approving an opponent's doctrine. On the other hand, no one would be a fool if one is wise merely because one claims to be. These contradictory conclusions are, of course, untenable. In these comments, the Buddha is not saying anything about the truth or falsehood of the people's truth claims. Rather he is pointing to the inadequacy of some of the (simplistic) ways people argue that they are right and others are wrong.

~Gil Fronsdal, in "The Buddha before Buddhism"

The Universe

The Buddha was once asked: "What is the universe?"

His answer: "Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and thinking—this is the universe."

The Universe

The Universe was evolved. It was not created. The Universe functions according to law, not according to the caprice of any god.