At Huffington Post, a Rabbi cites Buddhism to argue that all right-thinking religious people are creationists. Here's what Rabbi Alan Lurie wrote:
"Throughout recorded history the majority of humanity has seen the existence of a Creator, Who intentionally brought the Universe in to being and sustains all life, as an obvious truth. ... Even Buddhism, which is often misrepresented as an atheistic tradition, recognizes the existence of a guiding consciousness.
Now, there are many things that Buddhists disagree about, but this is not one of them. According to Buddhist teaching there is no Creator God, and existence does not depend on a supernatural intelligence guiding it.
Theravadin monk and scholar Nyanaponika Thera said,
"From a study of the discourses of the Buddha preserved in the Pali canon, it will be seen that the idea of a personal deity, a creator god conceived to be eternal and omnipotent, is incompatible with the Buddha's teachings. On the other hand, conceptions of an impersonal godhead of any description, such as world-soul, etc., are excluded by the Buddha's teachings on Anatta, non-self or unsubstantiality."
In Buddhist literature, the belief in a creator god (issara-nimmana-vada) is frequently mentioned and rejected, along with other causes wrongly adduced to explain the origin of the world; as, for instance, world-soul, time, nature, etc. God-belief, however, is placed in the same category as those morally destructive wrong views which deny the kammic results of action, assume a fortuitous origin of man and nature, or teach absolute determinism. These views are said to be altogether pernicious, having definite bad results due to their effect on ethical conduct."
The quote above is from an essay called "Buddhism and the God-idea" that's quite good. Do read more of it if you need more clarification on this point.
In Buddhism, the way things come into existence is explained through the doctrine of DDependent Origination, also called interdependent arising. His Holiness the Dalai Lama said,
"An understanding of the principle of interdependent arising means that all conditioned things and events in the universe come into being only as a result of the interaction of causes and conditions. This is significant because it precludes two possibilities. One is the possibility that things can arise from nowhere, with no causes and conditions, and the second is that things can arise on account of a transcendent designer or creator. Both these possibilities are negated." [From The New Mandala: Eastern Wisdom for Western Living by John Lundin, pages 101-102]
Now, that's said about as plainly as anything can be said. Creationism -- the belief that the universe must have been created by a creator god -- has no place in Buddhism and is not supported by Buddhist teaching. Period, end of discussion.
Rabbi Lurie supports his claim about Buddhism with a quotation from a Rinzai Zen teacher named Soyen Shaku -- "Let me state that Buddhism is not atheistic as the term is ordinarily understood. It has certainly a God, the highest reality and truth, through which and in which this universe exists."
So what about this? Soyen Shaku (1860-1919) became the first Zen teacher to set foot on North America when he traveled here to speak at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, 1893. He returned in 1905 to give some lectures. It appears he did not speak English and relied on translators, one of whom was D.T. Suzuki.
So it's possible something was lost in translation. It's also possible that Soyen Shaku believed he had to say something affirmative about God so that his audience didn't turn against him. Also, Soyen Shaku didn't say anything about a "guiding consciousness."
However, one does run into Zen teachers using the word "God" sometimes. For example, in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki wrote (page 67):
"Usually everyone forgets about zazen. Everyone forgets about God. They work very hard at the second and third kinds of creation, but God does not help the activity. How is it possible for Him to help when He does not realize who He is?"
What kind of god doesn't know who he is? Not the Abrahamic one, for sure. One might imagine that Buddha Nature or the dharmakaya are sorta kinda equivalent to God, although I think the conceptual clutter that comes with "God" is unhelpful.
Anyway, this usage is an interesting thing, and in a recent blog post Brad Warner said he is writing a book "to explain why I think it makes sense to use the word 'God' in the context of contemporary Buddhism." I am looking forward to what he says.
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