What do you call the belief that God’s are just higher beings on other planes of existence while not believing in manmade organised dogmatic religons?
What do you call the belief that God’s are just higher beings on other planes of existence while not believing in manmade organised dogmatic religons?
In Buddhism the God realm is where beings with very good karma go after death. Where they often become apathetic, burn off their good karma, and don’t reach enlightenment.
The cosmology also reflects inflated/deflated egos. The mind needs to be balanced to easily see the path, and the lower realms have a lot of pain while the upper ones have a lot of pleasure.
The idea behind enlightenment is to transcend both pleasure and pain. All the realms of birth and death.
But there’s some God realms looked after by enlightened Buddhas rather than Gods. In Pure Land Buddhism for example, merit practice is about being reborn in one of these realms, so in the next life enlightenment is easier to reach.
Personally, I vowed to be reborn to practice under Kwan Yin/Avolokita. Bodhisattva of compassion. I practice in this life too. But in the next one I’d like to do it in a nun’s robes.