Karen Armstrong

In the rare moments I have had recently for anything other than work, schoolwork, other necessary business, and sleep, I have been attempting to make a little time for personal reading. I recently finished When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris (I am a huge fan) and am now reading Buddha by Karen Armstrong. I have been wanting to read one of her books ever since hearing her interviewed on both Bill Moyers Journal and
Speaking of Faith. She is a wonderful refreshing blend of articulate, wise, insightful, and thoughtful, and directs her talents towards the study of the history of religion, a topic which has become one of endless fascination to me. I chose to start w/ Buddha for obvious reasons, and the book does not disappoint.

I have been underlining like mad, as much of what she writes resonates strongly with me. It has also deepened my understanding of a subject I thought I was well acquainted with by placing it in a historical context more fully fleshed out than any I have read before.

I also am enjoying, for some reason, her use of Pali terms rather than the more familiar Sanskrit. Thus, 'nirvana' becomes 'nibbana', dharma becomes 'dhamma', etc.

“The Buddha believed that a selfless life would introduce men and women to Nibbana. Monotheists would say that it would bring them into the presence of God. But the Buddha found the notion of a personalized deity too limiting, because it suggested that the supreme Truth was only another being. Nibbana was neither a personality nor a place like Heaven. The Buddha always denied the existence of any absolute prin­ciple or Supreme Being, since this could be another thing to cling to, another fetter and impediment to enlightenment.

“Like the doctrine of the Self, the notion of God can also be used to prop up and inflate the ego. The most sensitive monotheists in Judaism, Christianity and Islam would all be aware of this danger and would speak of God in ways that are reminiscent of the Buddha’s reticence about Nibbana. They would also in­sist that God was not another being, that our notion of “exis­tence” was so limited that it was more accurate to say that God did not exist and that “he” was Nothing.

“But on a more popu­lar level, it is certainly true that “God” is often reduced to an idol created in the image and likeness of “his” worshipers. If we imagine God to be a being like ourselves writ large, with likes and dislikes similar to our own, it is all too easy to make “him” endorse some of our most uncharitable, selfish and even lethal hopes, fears and prejudices. This limited God has thus contributed to some of the worst religious atrocities in history.

“The Buddha would have described belief in a deity who gives a seal of sacred approval to our own selves as “un­skillful”: it could only embed the believer in the damaging and dangerous egotism that he or she was supposed to transcend. Enlightenment demands that we reject any such false prop. It seems that a “direct” yogic understanding of anatta ('no self') was one of the chief ways in which the early Buddhists experienced Nibbana. And, indeed, the Axial Age faiths all insist in one way or another that we will only fulfill ourselves if we practice total self-abandonment. To go into religion to “get” some­thing, such as a comfortable retirement in the afterlife, is to miss the point.