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Old 27-02-2023, 11:19 PM
Maisy Maisy is offline
Master
Join Date: Jan 2022
Posts: 1,649
 
The topics original question was "Did the Buddha believe there were gods?" I assume the Buddha asked about was the one that founded Buddhism. There is no doubt some schools of Buddhism believe in Gods, but I'm not sure about Buddha. I think his position was he refused to talk about the subject. So Buddha did not say there was a God and he did not say there was no God either.

My feeling is Buddha's practice was to live non-conceptually. So he only dealt with what was present to his senses and inner awareness. I think he did not let his mind go off into speculation on things we can not directly perceive.

I believe a bunch of his suttas talk about this. How wondering if something exists or not is just speculation.

The Buddha explains why he has left these speculative views undeclared (MN 63.8):

"Because it is unbeneficial, it does not belong to the fundamentals of the holy life, it does not lead to disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation, to peace, to direct knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nibbana." Buddha
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