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Robert Walker

If this is a question about Buddhism - then - well some of the attitude of an atheist is quite useful. But it just goes a bit far. To say there isn’t a God is as much as a religious view as to say there is a God. It’s asserting something you can’t know from your own experience.

The Buddhist path is to work with what you have and what you know. And to keep an open mind about the things you don’t and can’t know. Trungpa Rinpoche talked about a “Nontheist”.

You might be interested in Trungpa Rinpoche’s The Decision to Become a Buddhist

“One of the big steps in the Buddha’s development was his realization that there is no reason we should believe in or expect anything greater than the basic inspiration that exists in us already. This is a nontheistic tradition: the Buddha gave up relying on any kind of divine principle that would descend on him and solve his problems. So taking refuge in the Buddha in no way means regarding him as a god. He was simply a person who practiced, worked, studied, and experienced things personally. With that in mind, taking refuge in the Buddha amounts to renouncing misconceptions about divine existence. Since we possess what is known as buddhanature, enlightened intelligence, we don’t have to borrow somebody else’s glory. We are not all that helpless. We have our own resources already. A hierarchy of divine principles is irrelevant. It is very much up to us. Our individuality has produced our own world. The whole situation is very personal.”

About the Author

Robert Walker

Robert Walker

Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.
Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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