Interlog

Buddhism: theistic or atheistic

There is some very interesting material by Rev. Gudo Nishijima on "God and the Universe" at Dogen Sangha Blog.

Creation?

A member of the Amida Order put forward a question: "One way to formulate the question is as a comparison of Amida with the Christian God. As I understand it the Christian God is a creator - thus the creation myth. I can regard this in two distinct ways. Historically, God created the world, long ago. Phenomenologically, God is continually creating the manifest world out of the unmanifest. From a Buddhist perspective, this could be regarded as experience arising out of the void, and Amida being identified with that void - measureless - until it actually manifests and is specific. We can then have access to the experience at different levels, in different dimensions, the everyday, the archetypal, and the ineffable - our relationship to the sublime. So my question is, can Amida be understood as a creator in this sense of the ground out of which experience arises?"

Simone Weil

This evening, at The Buddhist House, we had a seminar about Simone Weil (1909-1943), regarded by many as one of the foremost religious thinkers of the 20th century. We were particularly looking at how a person can be simultaneously a genius and a misfit, a much loved figure and an outcast, skilled and inept. Weil came from a secular Jewish backgroud in France and was exceptionally intelligent, yet over shadowed by her brother Andre who was even more intellectually gifted and became one of the great methematicians of the century. When Simone and Andre met they would converse in ancient Greek, just one of many languages she learnt. Simone early developed intense feelings about social oppression and