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In reply to the discussion: The Dalai Lama, a sordid history of Nazi Mentors and forgiving Fascists [View all]HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)Soyen shaku says you are wrong:
AMONG the many critical opinions which are passed upon Buddhism by Christian or Western scholars, there are two which stand out most conspicuously and most persistently.
One of them declares that Buddhism is a religion which denies the existence of the soul, and the other that it is atheistic or at best pantheistic, which latter term implies what is practically tantamount to the rejection of a God, that is, a personal God as believed in by the Christians.
At the outset, let me state that Buddhism is not atheistic as the term is ordinarily understood. It has certainly a God, the highest reality and truth, through which and in which this universe exists. However, the followers of Buddhism usually avoid the term God, for it savors so much of Christianity, whose spirit is not always exactly in accord with the Buddhist interpretation of religious experience.
Buddhism is the most speculative of all the existing religions in the world and abounds with many highly abstract terms which may sound empty to ordinary minds. Among them we have such words as Tathâtâ (or Tathâtva), Tattva, Bhûtatathâtâ, Bhûtakoti, Çûnyatâ, Alakshitam, Nirvâna, etc. These are all philosophical terms for Dharmakâya.
To explain: Tathâtâ or tathâtva or tattva is "suchness," or "being such," and Buddhist scholars assert that, strictly speaking, these terms alone rightly designate the nature of the highest reality.
When we speak of its absolute transcendentality, people are liable to take it for an empty nothing; while if we state that it is eternally true and real, they may consider it something concrete and particular. To avoid both extremes, or rather to synthesize them, the term "Suchness" has been coined; but in reality all human efforts are altogether
insufficient to express the true nature of the Ultimate.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/zfa/zfa04.htm