On Buddhism and the Baha'i Faith: The God of Buddha and Baha'u'llah

All religions look to the same God, Baha'is believe. "Well, how about Buddhism?" some may ask. "Buddhists don't believe in God, do they?" Moojan Moman writes about the relationship betweem Buddhism and the Baha'i Faith.

Although Baha'u'llah uses terms--such as "God"--derived from Judaeo-Christian-Islamic theology, in fact, Baha'u'llah, like the Buddha, discourages his followers from spending too much time trying to understand these matters for, he states, they will never be understood in any absolute sense. Both the Buddha and Baha'u'llah are agreed that all descriptions and attempts to explain this reality are true only in a relative sense and it is possible even for contradictory statements to be true (see, for example, the famous story told by the Buddha of the blind men touching an elephant and their different and contradictory descriptions of it, Udana 6:62ff).

Having established that absolute knowledge of such matters is impossible to attain, the Baha'i position is that the various understandings of these matters in the different religious systems of the world are all aspects of the truth. Each religious system provides an understanding from its own viewpoint and each understanding is correct from its own perspective, even though it may appear to be radically different from others. It is therefore not surprising to find in the Baha'i scriptures passages that are parallel to Buddhist metaphysical conceptions. These Baha'i concepts are often couched in terms that are alien to Buddhism--the terms of Judaeo-Christian-Muslim theology, which was, after all, the only language available to Baha'u'llah with which to communicate with those around him. These terms are only the result of the limitations of the contingent world (samsra) in trying to describe the Absolute. If one looks beyond the terms themselves to the concepts that they are conveying, one can find strong correspondences between many central Buddhist ideas and concepts in the Baha'i scriptures:
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c. The Absolute. The Buddhas have assured us that behind this impermanent world and its illusion, there is a reality, the Absolute Reality. Because of this, it is possible for us to escape from the sorrow caused by the chances and changes of this world. Gautama Buddha speaks of the Supramundane (lokuttara, lokottara) or Unconditioned (asankhata, asamskrita). Being beyond this world, we have no adequate words to speak of the Absolute. The following is the Buddha's description of it in the famous Udana passage in the Khuddaka Nikaya: "There is, O monks, an Unborn, Unoriginated, Uncreated, Unformed. Were there not, O monks, this Unborn, Unoriginated, Uncreated, Unformed, there would be no escape from the world of the born, originated, created, formed. Since, O monks, there is an Unborn, Unoriginated, Uncreated, Unformed, therefore is there an escape from the born, originated, created, formed. What is dependant, that also moves; what is independent does not move" (Udana 8:3). Nagarjuna, the founder of the Madhyamika school of Buddhism, argues from this passage that without the acceptance of an Ultimate Reality (Paramartha) there can be no deliverance (nirvana) (Madhyamika Karikas, cited in Murti 235).

Baha'u'llah similarly speaks of an entity, an Unknowable Essence, of which nothing can be predicated: "To every discerning and illumined heart it is evident that God, the unknowable Essence, the divine Being, is immensely exalted beyond every human attribute, such as corporeal existence, ascent and descent, egress and regress . . . He standeth exalted beyond and above all separation and union, all proximity and remoteness. No sign can indicate His presence or His absence" (KI 98). Such passages in the writings of Baha'u'llah correlate strongly with the writings of Nagarjuna where he argues for the emptiness of all dogmatic positions (shunyata of drishti, see Murti 140-142).

Moojan Moomen, "Buddhism and the Baha'i Faith"