And it broke in major ways from the Orthodox Hinduism, the Vedic tradition of his time.
So, Hinduism has two important beliefs which are rejected by Buddhism.
One is the existence of God,
one is the existence of self.
Now we're going to talk about the self in another lecture,
so let's talk about God first of all.
So Hinduism is a theist religion, it believes in God,
in fact it's monotheistic religion although you might not have this impression
because you can see a sort of paraphernalia of all the Hindu gods.
In fact, there is only one Hindu Godhead and that's Brahman.
Okay, the other things you're likely to come across
are personifications or avatars of the Godhead.
So, in Hindu cosmology,
the cosmos is cyclical it comes into existence,
it's maintained for a while then it goes out of existence then it starts again.
And there are aspects of Brahman,
the Godhead which correspond to these three phases.
So there's Brahma who is the aspect of Brahman in the creative phase,
there is Visnu who has the aspect in the maintenance and
then the Siva. Who is the aspect in the destruction.
Now these are not three separate gods any more than God the Father,
God the son, God the Holy Ghost are three Gods.
The three aspects of one the same Godhead.
And it's further complicated by the fact that some of
these aspects can actually have avatars,
so they manifest in human history.
So for example Visnu manifests as Krsna in
the epic poem Mahabharata and as Rama in the poem the Ramayanam.
However, there is strictly speaking only one Godhead.
Now Buddhism rejected this,
there is no God in Buddhism.
I've sometimes spoken to people who have met this view with incredulity,
how can you have a religion which hasn't got a God?
Well this is just Middle Eastern myopia.
Of course you can have religion without a God, Buddhism is one.
I challenge anyone to go to temples or services of
a Buddhist nature in Tibet or Japan or Thailand and tell me this is not a religion.
It has its rituals, it has practices,
has its sacred texts,
it has holy places, it has a priesthood,
it has a power structure,
all the sociological trappings of a religion and it's an atheist religion.
So Buddhism rejected the existence of God.
In the last lecture, I told you that
the first part of the fourth Noble Truth is right view,
understand the world in which you're living,
and the world in which you are living if you are a Buddhist is a world of impermanence.
Everything comes into existence at the appropriate time,
is maintained and goes out of existence.
Now if that's your view of the world,
there is no room for God because God is
not the kind of thing which comes into existence and goes out of existence.
You might want to say isn't this a big question begging because you know maybe after
all God isn't impermanent and so impermanence is just wrong.
And I suppose as an argument against
the existence of God this is sort of question begging.
However, it tells you something important about Buddhism,
Buddhism is interested only in those things which are in the causal flux.
Okay, in that sense,
it's a very naturalistic religion.
To summarize that bit of the argument,
then Buddhism rejects the existence of God.
Now, that's important because if you subscribe to a religion in which there is a God,
then there is room for God to tell you stuff which you have no other way of knowing.
So you can believe things because, but only because, there's
some sacred text that tells you whether it's the Bible or the Hindu Vedars or whatever.
You have no way of knowing these things unless they are revealed to you by the scripture.
That doesn't mean that you can't figure out some other things for yourself,
but there are going to be some things that you cannot know unless they reveal to you.
So, for example, in Orthodox Catholic Theology,
there is a distinction drawn between natural theology and revealed theology.
So natural theology is constituted by the things which you can work out for yourself.
So, for example it is still
Orthodox Catholicism that you can prove the existence of God by a variety of arguments.
That's something you can work out by the pure light of natural reasoning.
Whether or not that's true, is neither here nor
there, its part of the view that you can't figure out these things yourself.
Whereas there are other things about Christianity which you can't figure out yourself.
For example you can't figure out that there was going to be an incarnation,
that you only know because of revealed religion.
So, if you have a God
then there is scope for revelation and if there's scope for revelation,
then there's the possibility of a tension between what God reveals and
what we kind of know from other sources.
So, the existence of a God allows for the possibility of a tension between
what divine revelation tells us
and what we find out by science and of course the conflict
between science and religion has been a feature of
Western thought for at least 600 or 700 years now.
It might be possible to overcome this tension and many people think it is,
but the point is that the tension is there.
Okay, now if you have an atheist religion,
that tension is not there,
there's no source of revealed truth,
all you have is what you
can figure out for yourself and that's how things stand with Buddhism.
All right, so that's a very general statement of the fact that you don't get the kind of
tension between science and religion that in Buddhism that you do in say Christianity.
Now, let's look at these things a little bit more detail.
There is one of the sutras called the Kalama Sutra,
which takes up the matter in detail of why you should believe something.
So, the Buddha is talking to the Kalama.
And they say, "We've got these people telling us this,
these people telling us that. What the hell do we believe?"
And the Buddha answers the question and he says the following.
So, this is a translation of the relevant part of the Kalama Sutra.
"Don't go by reports,
by legends, by traditions,
by scripture, by logical conjecture,
by inference, by analogies,
by agreement through pondering views,
by probability, or by the thought,
'This contemplative person is my teacher.'
When you know for yourselves that,
'These qualities are skilful;
these qualities are blameless;
these qualities are praised by the wise;
these qualities when adopted and carried out,
lead to welfare and happiness',
then you should enter and remain in them."
Okay. So, the most obvious thing about this is
the fact that the sutra says, "Don't believe something"
simply because it's in some bit of scripture.
Simply because some priest tells you.
Simply by the fact that it's in your tradition.
Okay? These don't work.
So, in the end,
you can't depend on these things.
You have to figure it out for yourself.
That's the most obvious thing about this text.
Now, there's something about this text.
Let's take a second look at it,
which might give you some thought on this matter.
Because it also says,
"Don't rely on inference,
analogy, agreement through pondering views, property, etc."
So, that might look as though it's saying,
"You can't figure it out for yourself."
So, what's going on here?
Well, what's going on is something like this.