Listening to the Krishna vs. Jehovah debate, I realized that Buddhism really has no common ground with religions. Both parties were concerned only with matters of thought and belief, with what had happened in the dim past and what might happen in the far flung future, or what was happening far, far away where God hung out. While I'll admit to having had a slight fascination with such things in the past, every single explanation I ever came across failed to address anything that was truly meaningful in my life. The scientific explanations were convincing enough, but left me cold and ultimately bored while the religious ones just made my head spin. It might be interesting to speculate on what happened a godzillion years ago when Krishna first decided to emanate the material energy from His body to create the material Universe or 6,000 years ago when Jehovah decided to make some meat puppets to hang out on Earth and screw everything up until He got so pissed off at 'em He had to wipe 'em all out. It can be kinda neat to sit and dream about all the things that might become of you after you shuffle off this mortal coil. Maybe you'll end up in Heaven with the Saints and angels, or maybe you'll wind up in Krishna Loka with all those tasty looking babes you see in the paintings in the Krishna books (I'd prefer the latter). Maybe death will be just like sleeping only a lot longer. Or maybe you'll get reincarnated and get to be a bird or a wildebeest or maybe a llama. Heck maybe you'll even get to be the Dalai Lama.
Buddhism is about Reality. Religion is about thought. Reality is not the same as thought. Some words tickle a certain spot in some folks' brains, while other words get another spot all hot and bothered. And depending on where you like to be tickled, that's what you'll choose to believe in. Buddhism deals with an absolutely different area. Buddhism addresses the very fact of why we want to have our brains tickled all the time.
What I always wanted to know when faced with such explanations was the biggest question of all: So what? I'm not certain what anyone gets out of having some very rigid beliefs about how the Universe came to be or about how it'll end or even about what happens after you die. The search for comfort seems to be the driving force of such beliefs. But I don't see any evidence that they make anyone very comfortable at all. The stronger your beliefs the more you seem to need to reinforce them by convincing others you're right. But if you really are right in what you believe, why does it matter whether anyone's convinved or not?
The reason beliefs don't make us comfortable is stupidly clear if you ever take a moment to look. Life never works the way we think it will and in our heart of hearts every single one of us knows this for a fact every bit as clearly as we know how to breathe and how to make wee-wee. Even if you knew for a fact that, say, next Tuesday you were going to meet your dad and play backgammon, you have no idea at all what that event will really be like until you actually do it and after it's over your memories of what happened are faulty and ill-detailed at best. What is more, neither your memories nor your anticipations of future happenings, no matter how detailed, are ever the same as the actual act. You do not know your future even when you know your future. You don't know your past at all. I mean, how exactly did brushing your teeth this morning feel? Can you say for certain? You do not even know the present moment. Try and describe it in a way that no one on Earth could mistake what you're talking about. Try and describe it to yourself before it moves on and becomes something completely different. So even if I know for certain I'm going to Heaven or wherever or that I'm gonna get Enlightened or even that I have already gotten Enlightened some time in the past, so freakin' what?
Here's a secret though, one I'm a little reluctant to reveal, but which I will anyway because I heard it long before I understood what it meant and I appreciated hearing it. So maybe you will too. And forgive me for "witnessing" a bit for my own faith. If you practice zazen long enough you will discover exactly when, where, how and why the Universe was created and destroyed and you will know precisely what God looks like as well as what God enjoys eating and what God does in His spare time. And it can't be confirmed or denied for you by any authority at all. Not a single spiritual seeker of any faith or description anywhere in the world throughout all of history, past, or future, would ever be satisfied with your explanation or anyone else's for that matter. So why bother trying? Such descriptions are not only meaningless, they are also always, always, always wrong. It's like trying to describe the color green without using any words for colors. Hell, it's like trying to describe the color green while using every word for color in the dictionary. It don't amount to nothin' and it never will."
http://homepage.mac.com/doubtboy/
-Brad Warner