Becoming God: Mormonism and Buddhism
We all know that Buddhism does not adhere to the idea of a creator God. When the Buddha was asked, ‘is there a God’? He did not affirm, or deny. He was silent. That is because Buddhism is interested in what can be known via experience through empirical study. If one meditates deep enough, one will inevitably sink into the sense that the self does not exist and that no-thing is what prevails and invades all senses.
At the same time, in Buddhism the strive is to become a Buddha. In other words, to become enlightened yourself. As a Buddhist monk in China explained to me, when he bows down to the Buddha, he is not bowing down only to the historical Sakyamni Buddha or Siddharta but to his future self, to what he strives to become.
I am not deeply read in Mormonism, an authentic United States religion. In fact, my understanding is quite shallow and I will inevitably make mistakes, however, I think that the gist of what I am arguing is correct, and due to lack of time I cannot delve into it further. From what I gather, Mormonism teaches that God himself was once a human being who later became God. There was not a creator God who creates all that is, because this same God was created by a God who came before him, and this goes back ad infinitum. This is similar to Buddhism that believes that the universe was not created but always existed. Arguably, it is just as inconceivable to believe God created the world than to believe the world was always there or that it was always created by a God who came before the current God we know. At some point our mind cannot stretch that far and we give up trying to understand how it is possible (not to say that it is the truth).
According to Mormonism, God the father, who was once a human, mated with the Goddess and had children who formed us. We existed even before creation in a different world and chose to come to this one. This contradicts with traditional Christian teaching that holds that we were created at birth and before did not exist. Jesus Christ himself first appeared in Palestine and then reappeared in the United States thousands of years later and taught the lost tribes. His original teachings were lost in what Mormons term The Great Apostasy. The Trinity as a one God does not exist, instead there is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, each as an individual entity.
According to Mormonism the ultimate end of each and every one of us is to become God. When that happens, we will rule over a universe that we will create. Similarly, in the Sutra of Infinite Life, the Buddha argued that there was once a monk named Amitabha who saw that people were suffering and could not move past the cycle of reincarnation. He therefore decided to create a universe in the Western Pure Lands where people could go to after their death and practice Buddhism in a less difficult environment than this one. According to Pureland Buddhism, a common school in China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam, anyone who calls on Amitabha will be saved by him after death and will not need to come back to this world. In other words, Amitabha is a savior, just like Jesus Christ is a savior in Christian outlook. This contradicts many western Buddhists who claim that in Buddhism there is no savior and one can only liberate himself by one’s own efforts.
According to Mormonism, there is no reincarnation, but there is no hell either, just a purgatory which is temporary. Every soul will eventually make its way out of purgatory. According to Christianity, hell is eternal. However, the final judgment is up to God and there are some theologians (Hans Urs von Balthasar, arguably St. Isaac of Ninveh), who believe that God will not let a single person fall into the fires of hell besides perhaps Satan himself.
To summon up, Mormonism holds that the ultimate destiny of the human person is to become God. Buddhism holds that Buddhahood is the goal humans should strive for, alas it can take many life-times, and quite possibly many people will never make it on their own and will need a savior (either Amitabha Buddha or a Boddhisatva, one who was enlightened but chose to incarnate again to help othersStriking similarities between the two religions).
From a purely anthropological or science-fiction stand point, it is interesting to see how in the United States a religion emerged that teaches that God himself was once a human being and that a human being could become God. Buddhism that came from the east teaches (Surangama Sutra) that human consciousness created the world due to its craving to attachment and that the people on this planet are tied together in a complex karmic relationship.
That said, Mormonism denies reincarnation. It argues, similarily to a classic Christian perspective, that if reincarnation is true, we will end up neglecting this life, Jesus’ sacrifice made no sense, and it contradicts the Bible that argues that man shall only live once, die once, and be judged once.
Mormonism is not recognized as a formal religion in China. Non-Chinese Mormons do not prosletyze to Chinese people in China. However, according to some, the Mormon church has prosletyzed to Chinese people abroad. Therefore, arguably, the Church of Latter Day saints has an interest in good US-China relations that will facilitate free travel.
*31.1.21 1:28 PM EET: The name of the Sutra mentioned was corrected from being The Sutra of Infinite Light to The Sutra of Infinite Life.
