About Buddhism

Buddhism is the practise of being a Buddha.

A Buddha is a living entity manifesting God or the Divine Force.

A Buddha is aware of the Divine Force inside and that Divine Force imbues every thought and deed.

Buddhas are gods.

Gods are not worshipped – there is no need for worship – gods are equal to all others. They are Buddhas only because they are aware of their own Divine Force.

Gods are leaders. They lead by passive example, not by physical action.

Buddhas teach when others ask them to teach, but they do not instruct. They allow others the right to live their lives as they please, unless they ask for guidance. Then, they share wisdom, not advice.

We can all be Buddhas.

To do so, we need to understand that we are all gods. We are all living entities manifesting Divine Force, or God.

As gods, we are separate to the physical world our bodies live in.

Our minds are apart from the daily travails. Our emotions are guided by our knowledge of ourselves, as gods.

Our intellect is directed by the knowledge that, as gods, the travails of this world, and of any world, are temporal, ephemeral, and passing.

As gods, we understand that pain and suffering is part of the experience of the physical world. We understand that joy and elation is also part of the physical world – but, to allow ourselves to experience any of these, we open ourselves to pain and suffering as well.

This is the tenet of the Middle Path – that to avoid pain and suffering, we do not allow ourselves to become emotionally or intellectually invested in any moment or any thing.

But Buddhas do not have to follow the Middle Path to be Buddhas. They have the freedom of choice to allow themselves to feel whatever they wish.

Their knowledge of the physical worlds, and their spiritual objectivity, enable them to understand that by allowing themselves to feel whatever they wish means that they may be subject to the consequences of doing that.

Buddhas understand that the physical realms are coded with laws of right action. Whenever right action has been usurped, consequences ensue. This is called Karma.

Karma is not something to be afraid of. Karma is a cultivating factor. It enables all paths to conform to the laws of right action encoded into any particular realm of manifestation. If a life path steers away from right action, Karma teaches how to get back to it. It is the leash that yanks back the straying dog; the walls we bump into when we search blindly in the dark; the soft hand on the small of our back guiding us gently forward; the sharp slap of rebuke when someone has misbehaved.

Karma is the reason why Buddhas do not need to teach. Karma teaches. Life, itself, teaches.

For all the depths of experience that can be had in the manifest worlds, one lifetime is never enough. The realms of experience are diverse and multitudinous. They are the manifestation of the Mind of God (or Divine Force).

God thinks and God focuses on an aspect of Thought. When God focuses, a manifestation occurs. A world is brought into being. Life is created.

God’s focus creates us, and focus means that our lives deal with particular issues, or particular streams of function and relation. Each life created is a separate life path.

When God has done with a focus, or the thought tracing a life path, God recycles that thought along the next stream of thought, that has been created from the ramifications the last one brought to mind – just as our own thoughts move from their initial stream into new fields of enlightenment.

This is the basis of reincarnation. We are gods; the manifestation of God in form; the expression of God’s thought; sparks created by Divine Force. We live our lives until God has experienced all there is to experience of our life path. But our life force does not die. God is immortal. God’s mind is ceaseless. God’s thoughts move on, and so do we, to a new life path.

As Buddhas, we understand this – that manifest life is ephemeral. We understand that all experience is ephemeral, even the most painful and tragic moments of it - or the most ecstatic and blissful. We understand that God exists apart from such experience, and so do we. It is therefore an unnecessary pain to cultivate a deep investment of mental or emotional energy in the manifest realms of existence.

Buddhas recognize that we are living as the manifestations of God’s thoughts. They understand that our Divinity is inherent. In so doing, they recognize that such Divinity is also inherent in every other aspect of the manifest realm around them. When we understand this, we realize that to be emotionally and mentally invested as individuals in this world – to live with an egotistical focus – means that we are setting ourselves apart from the whole that is God.

When we set ourselves apart, it is possible to make war with ourselves. We may create difficulties where there is no need to be any. We create desires and thirsts and hungers that need to be quenched, and in doing so, we forget who we are, as gods.

Buddhas are objective. Egotism and feeling – investment in the physical realm our bodies live in – are natural, if people are to follow the flow of their life paths to their end. But Buddhas know that all the choices we make in life have consequences.

As Buddhas, we understand that we are manifest because God is enjoying itself, and has a right to do so. God is enjoying exploring its thoughts and following their creative manifestation.

Just as anyone has a right to be emotionally invested in a movie they watch, to feel what happens as fully and completely as they can, or to be detached and accept that everything that happens has been created to form a ‘good story,’ so do Buddhas understand that they have a choice to feel pain or not, to be invested or detached, to feel ‘real’ or to feel ‘divine.’

Compare a nightmare with a dream. A nightmare controls you – it frightens, stirs the emotions, makes the heart race. Nightmares can be scary. Yet a dream can be controlled at times – it stimulates without hurting, it shows ways of enjoyment, it soothes and delights. Dreams are creative.

Buddhas choose to view dreams, not nightmares. They follow a creative path, not an over-stimulated one. They understand that all life has choices, but that those choices are often not what action can be taken, but what thought can be cultivated. They understand that how you think about things, what stance you take, is often the crux upon which events turn.

They understand that the best one can do in life is not to give up, not to give in, but to live life as fully and completely as you can, in the best functional way possible, until it ends. And that ending only comes at the moment you die.

They understand that to do our best means that we must follow whatever path is right, to analyze every moment so that we do what is right for us, and right by others, though we can only do that by our own values. They understand that when we follow a wrong path, Karma will show us the right path again.

Buddhas are, above all things, AWARE. And they assume responsibility for their lives based on that awareness. They understand that, by being responsible for themselves, they will act in the best manner to enable others to live their lives with the fullest freedom they can give – that of non-interference.

Buddhas are not pacifists. If a Buddha is in a situation where action needs to be taken to ensure the Buddha is still following their right path, then action will be taken – as long as no harm or interference is played upon others. A Buddha will stand up for their rights; will talk and negotiate; will prevent wrong-doing if it is possible without doing wrong, themselves; but a Buddha will walk away rather than become emotionally invested in bad feelings, physically invested in violence, or mentally invested in ego.

The only investment a Buddha retains is spiritual, and even that investment is detached. Buddhas do not believe their paths are the only paths to enlightenment. The spiritual modes of Buddhas recognize the laws of the physical realm and how those laws create patterns of behavior in others that need compassion and objectivity to deal with. Only by compassion and objectivity can such patterns be broken.

Nirvana is not a separate existence. Nirvana, or Heaven, is a state of mind.

Wherever we cultivate a peaceful state of mind, Nirvana exists. The mind is the key to all the manifest realms. God’s mind creates worlds, and so do ours. What we create in our minds exists.

This is why Buddhas help others and are such practical people. What we practice, we think. If we practice compassion, care and peace, we become compassionate, caring and peaceful. By applying ourselves in practical ways, we avoid investing ourselves in emotions or intellect. We function as well as we can, until life ends. We try not to suffer, because suffering prevents progress, and creativity needs progress to exist.

Buddhas are not perfect – they are humans manifesting Divine Force. Buddhas can therefore return to the Karmic cycle by simply forgetting their own Divinity. And they can be restored to Buddhahood by remembering it again.

The philosophical path of Buddhism is cultivated with mythologies, rituals, divine stories and histories as much as any other religious or spiritual stream manifest on Earth today, but what has been written above remains the gist of what Buddhism is about. You cannot become a Buddha by knowing the life history of Siddhartha Gautama. His life is an example, but not a rule.

You can become a Buddha only by becoming AWARE of your OWN Divinity, and living according to its force, alone. You cannot follow the life path of Siddhartha. You can only follow your own life path, advised, as you may be, by his wisdom, or whatever wisdom you find along the way.

Buddhas do not attempt to attain perfection. They recognize that life is perfect, already, in the state God needs it to be to experience what God wants to experience. Buddhas accept imperfection and strives to see beauty in all states of existence. Practical creativity is the expression of the Buddha, even if that is just a state of mind.

We are all gods but not all of us are Buddhas. We are not all of us aware of the Divinity within us. But we are all God’s mind. We are all One, for better or worse. The acceptance of these things underlies the philosophy of Buddhism.

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religion. Do not believe in anything simply on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But, after observation and analysis, when you find anything that agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."
~ Buddha Siddhartha Gautama ~

Find your inner strength through an open heart and a quiet mind.

“Life is nothing until it is lived, but it is yours to make sense of; and the value of it is nothing other than the sense you choose.”
~ Jean-Paul Sartre